19
312 BC
The Athenian trireme had seen action, and
his expensive Phoenician consort was missing, but he was rowing
strongly as he passed the foundations to the new lighthouse and his
owner might have been forgiven for feeling a twinge of pride. He’d
watched for that ship for two weeks, and there he was, one more
piece falling into place.
Stratokles leaned on the stone wall that edged his
rented garden, fondling the scar tissue at the end of his shortened
nose as he watched the familiar Athenian shape fold his oars to
meet the harbour boat. He nodded, well pleased - the ship had been
at sea long enough to temper the oarsmen, and now they responded
like professionals. Then, calling to his slaves, he dressed in a
plain chlamys, called for Lucius and his guards, and headed for the
waterfront.
I need some luck. The problem with spying -
with almost all forms of subterfuge - is that it was hard to trust
anyone, and harder to find the person who could be trusted and
still be clever enough to carry out orders. His guard captain,
Lucius, was a capable fighter - but not a thinker. Or not the kind
of thinker who could compete with Leon and Diodorus.
I need news. He needed to know that the
Olbian boy was dead. He’d seen this sort of thing before -
where a minor issue in a plan began to develop a life of its own.
Satyrus had become such an issue. Stratokles shook his head,
because the children were such a side issue.
I need Iphicrates. Stratokles had spent long
days negotiating with Macedonians - hard men who despised Ptolemy
only a little more than they despised Cassander or Antigonus
One-Eye. They despised Stratokles utterly, and they didn’t always
hide their contempt. Iphicrates can deal with them. I shouldn’t
even have met them. Even as he walked, Stratokles made a
gesture with his hand - a sort of peasant gesture to avert evil,
but in his lexicon it meant that he was conscious of having made a
mistake.
I hate Macedonians. Iphicrates might be
sullen and secretive, but he was a brilliant fighter and a man who
the Macedonians would accept as a negotiator - fools and thugs
every one. And he needed Iphicrates to fight back against Leon and
his minions.
That black bastard has everything,
Stratokles thought. Good subordinates, time, money - fuck him.
I’m smarter, and I’ll pull this thing off with my bare hands if I
have to.
Stratokles had endured a month of humiliations as
his household servants were hounded and beaten, his slaves stolen,
his house vandalized. A punitive raid by Leon’s mercenaries had all
but destroyed one of the criminal associations he had hired, and
now only a handful of desperate men would take his coin.
Don’t go soft, short-nose, he told
himself.
The endless friction of the job was getting to him,
and he stopped on the wharf to take a deep breath and look around
him. He was close - very close - to suborning Ptolemy’s senior
officers. No time for self-pity now. His plan - and the future of
Athens - needed him to keep a steady hand on the tiller. And it
wasn’t all doom and gloom. Despite growing frictions between
Cassander and Ptolemy, he had lulled the court with his tales of a
summer campaign against Cassander by One-Eye and managed to
convince the lord of Aegypt to ship a full taxeis of his veterans
away to Macedonia, and he had demanded, and gained, a declaration
of independence for the city-states of old Greece, a political
statement that would muddy the waters at home and help Athens in
fifty different ways. Demetrios of Phaleron would smile in delight,
the oligarchic bastard.
Athens, I will yet free you! he thought.
Then he grinned. Out loud, he said, ‘Athens, I will free you. If I
have to sacrifice every one of these bastards to do it.’ That made
him feel better.
It was time to repay Cassander for two years of
slights and indignities - time to play his hand for himself and
Athens. Cassander was losing his touch, and he wasn’t going to be
the winning side. Stratokles needed Athens to be on the winning
side - powerful on the winning side - to get what he needed and
make Athens free.
So he had begun - carefully - to exchange letters
with Antigonus One-Eye, ensuring himself a soft and feathered nest
when he jumped - when Athens jumped. He would take a satrapy -
preferably Phrygia. Phrygia would make a useful springboard for
Athens, a capable ally, a market for goods. And he had an eye on
the perfect wife for the Satrap of Phrygia. A fine child, the only
heir of the Euxine’s second or third most powerful city. Amastris
of Heraklea. All he needed was one last brilliant thrust and a
little astute kidnapping - in most ways, an easier mission than
playing all three corners between Cassander, One-Eye and
Ptolemy.
The mutiny of the Macedonians - that would
paralyze Ptolemy whether the doctor was successful or not.
Always have a second line of plans, Stratokles thought while
fingering his beard. And a third line if you can manage
it.
Then he’d board that ship and leave, before Ptolemy
discovered how thoroughly he had been bought and sold. The Athenian
grinned and thought again of his employee, the doctor. If Cassander
was paying the doctor, Stratokles thought that he might do well to
avoid the man, even if he had been the doctor’s patron. Because
soon enough, Cassander would realize that Stratokles had changed
horses, and then the doctor would come after him.
And then it came to him - the master stroke that
would sweep the board. He actually stopped walking in the middle of
the Posideion and stood still as the wonder of the idea filled
him.
Short-nose, you’re the smartest bastard in all
the circle of the world.
Stratokles beat his own ship to the piers and
spent an uncomfortable ten minutes waiting around for the trireme
to come alongside. He couldn’t afford to draw the attention of the
guards at this point - he didn’t mind if people associated his ship
with the death of the Olbian boy, but he didn’t want the link too
plain. He felt the frustration of a man on the edge of a great
success, who has to depend on the whims of Fate.
But the guards on the piers were busy checking
bills of lading, or collecting bribes from merchants. None spared
him a glance.
Finally, the Athenian trireme turned in for the
pier. Her oars shot in - a beautiful manoeuvre - and she coasted
along, just barely moving, so that her helmsman only had to make a
single turn to spend the last of her momentum.
Stratokles didn’t know that voice. He froze. The
Athenian trireme embraced the pier like an old friend with scarcely
a sound. Iphicrates had never handled the ship with such -
elegance. Or without a lot of swearing . . .
‘Something’s wrong,’ Stratokles said to his guards.
He walked quickly to the sternward edge of the pier. ‘Iphicrates?’
he called. ‘Show yourself !’
He waited a moment as marines put a plank over the
gunwale. ‘Back to your places!’ he called.
‘Best let me go first,’ Lucius said.
Stratokles shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I need
to know what’s going on. If Iphicrates is hurt . . .’ He shook his
head. ‘Fuck this.’ He leaped on to the plank. ‘Who’s in command
here?’
Momentum carried him two steps up the stern after
the shock of recognition struck him. Those were not his
officers standing in the stern. He reached for his sword. And
that boy—
He leaped back on to the docks, rolled without
tangling his cloak and came to his feet.
‘Secure that man! Xenophon!’ the boy barked.
Stratokles owed his life to the fact that the men
on his ship - his ship! - were as stunned as he. He gathered
his guards and ran, and the marines didn’t get another sight of
him.
All the way back to his house, Stratokles tried to
see how this could have happened and what the ramifications were.
The loss of his ship was a serious blow - that ship meant mobility
and freedom and a last bolt-hole if things went spectacularly
wrong.
Just short of his gate, Stratokles shook his head
as if he’d been in a conversation with another man. He put his hand
out and stopped his guards.
‘Lucius - wait.’ Stratokles pointed at the house.
‘We don’t know that’s safe.’ He rubbed his chin. ‘No - they can’t
have got word here yet - have to move fast. Get all the slaves, all
the chests and the cash. Load it on the slaves. Fast as you can.
Go!’
Lucius was a man used to obeying, and he leaped
into action, barking orders at the other guards, most of them
Keltoi or Iberians.
In less than an hour, they stripped Stratokles’
residence of cash and belongings, made a train of his slaves and
some hastily hired porters, and vanished to his bolt-hole - that
is, to one of his bolt-holes.
Stratokles fought for calm acceptance, but he was
angry. ‘What the fuck could have happened?’ he asked Lucius. ‘More
important, what do I do now?’
Lucius shrugged. ‘Anything that got old Iphicrates
. . .’ he muttered, and shrugged. ‘We’ve got horses. Let’s head out
across the desert. You said yourself that most of your damage was
done and that Gabines was on to you.’
Stratokles stood still in the street, breathing
hard. But then he shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No - we won’t cut
and run. Not yet. I’m this close to burying Ptolemy for
ever. I’ll stand my ground, for now.’
Lucius shook his head. ‘Well, I’m with you, then,’
he said. ‘Let’s get this done.’
When he was standing in the courtyard of his safe
house, a shit-hole taverna he’d purchased in the unfashionable
south-east quarter, he breathed easier despite the stink of the
tannery next door.
Think it through, he said to himself.
Terrified slaves put bales of his goods down in the
courtyard. Stratokles snapped his fingers, and two of his guards
stepped forward.
‘Pay them well,’ Stratokles said. The expense was
ruinous, but he couldn’t afford the betrayal of a slave at this
point.
A young Gaulish woman with a yellow bruise that
covered the left side of her face turned and bolted, fearing
something in his voice and guessing incorrectly. She ran out of the
courtyard, a six-year-old child at her side. Two of his best went
off in pursuit.
‘Athena!’ Stratokles protested to the heavens.
‘Zeus Soter! I intended no impiety!’ He stopped imploring the
heavens, as it scared the slaves. To Lucius, he said, ‘See to it we
have no more runners.’
The rest of the slaves huddled together, as if by
closeness they could achieve protection against the swords, like
the sheep in the tannery. Lucius’s men herded them into their new
quarters and put a bar across their door.
Before the shadows grew longer, the smaller of his
guards returned from the chase with a smug look on his face and a
head in a sack - a head with blond braids.
‘And the child?’ Stratokles asked.
The man looked around. ‘Never saw a child,’ he
said.
Stratokles shook his head. ‘She had a child.’
The man blinked. ‘Never saw a child,’ he said.
‘Maybe Dolgu saw the brat.’
Stratokles stifled his annoyance. ‘Fine. Send Dolgu
to me when he returns. In the meantime, go and buy me two new
slaves in the market and get this courtyard cleaned. And arrange to
send this note to the doctor. The usual way.’ The doctor was
comfortably ensconced at the palace, and would only communicate via
codes.
He had a new plan - it lacked the endless vistas of
beauty of the former plan, but it would serve. Its simplicity was
its beauty.
He would continue to foment the mutiny. That was
too easy. Cassander wanted the Macedonians in Macedon, and they all
wanted to go home. No need for deep planning there. The new wrinkle
was that he would use his tools to kill Ptolemy. And then,
when Antigonus strolled into the ensuing chaos, Stratokles would
use him to free Athens.
‘You want me to take the boys and have a go at
Leon’s men?’ Lucius asked. The big Italian was eating an
apple.
‘No,’ Stratokles said. ‘No, Leon’s a sideshow. The
children are a sideshow. If the doctor can get them, well and good,
but I’m done with such stuff. We work the Macedonians, and then we
decamp.’
Lucius finished his apple, right down to the seeds.
‘For what it’s worth, I agree. We can’t fight everyone.’
‘That’s just what I think,’ Stratokles said.