Lies That Bind Us

“Right,” said Simon. “We have the car. Big plans.”



“Like what?” asked Marcus.

“Well, don’t tell her I gave it away,” said Simon, double-checking that Melissa had not returned. “But we’ve got scuba diving this afternoon, then an hour in Knossos right before it closes.”

“The site?” said Marcus, perking up like a dog who has been promised a treat. “I thought no one was interested in that stuff.”

“Well, we’re not, to be honest,” said Simon. “Consider it a gift, professor. But hey, we’re in Crete. Gotta do some Minoan shit, right?”

“Right,” said Marcus, clearly delighted.

“But first,” said Simon, rather more enthused, “scuba! Better check the equipment.”

“We don’t rent it at the beach?” I asked. I wasn’t crazy about the prospect of diving. “Isn’t there some kind of mandatory training or something . . .”

“It’s fine,” said Simon. “I’m a certified instructor, and we hired the gear for the week. I’ll talk you through it.”

Right, I thought dismally as he headed out, whistling. He was certified. Of course he was.

Marcus caught my look.

“If you’re not comfortable doing it . . . ,” he began.

“It’s fine,” I said. Another lie. “Thanks. And then we get to do some Minoan shit.”

“For a whole hour,” said Marcus with a wan smile. “Yeah.”

“Think we’ll be able to fill the time?”

“In one of the most important archaeological sites in the world?” said Marcus, deadpan. “I don’t know. Maybe we can pick up some sudoku books on the way.”

“Maybe there’s an extensive gift shop,” I said. “Case after case of plaster Minotaurs.”

“We can but hope,” Marcus agreed, grinning.

“Better get my swimsuit,” I said. “See you in a few.”

“We’re kind of the odd ones out, aren’t we?” he said.

The remark stopped me. He was chewing his lower lip and gazing at the empty living room and its sprawling rented opulence. For a second we said nothing, then he made a tight little smile and a decision.

“Swimsuits,” he said.

“Yep.”



Chapter Thirteen

I have not moved except to take some of the tension out of the chain that binds my arm to the wall.

“I don’t understand,” I say at last. “Five years ago we were here. Not here in this place,” I say, though I’m still not sure where exactly I am, “but Crete. The hotel Minos.”

There is another loaded, expectant silence, and then the voice winds out of the dark once more.

“And what happened, Jan? What did you do?”

I am scared and flustered again, not knowing what to say but desperate not to get it wrong.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I don’t understand. I didn’t do anything. I don’t know what you mean.”

“I think you do,” said the voice, quicker this time, and I felt the irritation. The more I heard it, the more I was sure the voice was being electronically modified, distorted. That was what the green light meant. Some kind of device. Perhaps the idea that the questioner was just a person using some kind of gadget to disguise their voice should have made me feel better, but it didn’t.

“I don’t,” I say. “What do you think I did? Perhaps if you explain . . .”

“What did you do? What did you see?”

“I don’t know what you are talking about! How can I answer you if I don’t understand what—”

The light goes red and then goes out. I hear movement, and my eyes detect the vaguest shift in the shadows. He’s standing now.

“I’m sorry,” I gasp. “I’ll tell you anything. I just don’t know what you mean—”

There’s a metallic snap, loud as a gunshot in the dark, then a juddering creak, and I can see a graying of the darkness. He has opened the door.

Oh thank God, I think. He’s going to let me go.

I sit very still and then I feel a hand on my bare ankle. I bite down the shriek of horror and surprise, pulling my foot away, but the grip tightens, and then I feel something cold and flat against the flesh of my calf.

Metal. I can’t feel the shape of it properly, but I think it is a blade.

Again I try to pull away, kicking with the other leg, but then the knife—if that is what it is—pivots, and I feel not the flat, but the edge, sharp and biting, inching up the back of my leg.

It presses but does not slice, and I take it as a warning rather than the beginning of something more awful that may or may not follow, so I go still. In the same instant, I get a sense of his

His?

presence, his body close to mine, and I realize with a start that something is wrong.

The head is too large. I can barely see anything, so it’s as much an impression as it is anything certain, but I am suddenly sure of it. The head is too large and the breathing is strange, animal. Drunk with fear, some primitive, reptilian part of my brain says, Minotaur. The body of a man, the head of a great bull . . .

I don’t believe it, but I freeze. I want to say that I’m sorry, that I will try to remember whatever he wants to know, but the words won’t come. All my senses close in around the few square inches of thigh above the back of my knee, where his knife has come to rest. I think of the muscle and tendon there, the femoral artery. If he cuts that, I bleed to death.

I do not move. I wait, locked in powerless terror.

And then the pressure on my leg is gone. The cold of the blade, the grip around my ankle, the sense of him looming there, deciding what to do, are all gone. Almost immediately the door closes again, thudding shut. I don’t hear footsteps, but I am sure he

It

is gone, and I am alone again. I should feel better, but I don’t because I know he’s coming back. He’ll ask again, and again, and then, when I cannot answer, when I can’t begin to give him whatever it is he wants, he’ll kill me.

I know that as I know the concrete beneath me is hard and cold. It’s a certainty. I don’t understand why I am here or what he wants, but I understand that, and for the first time I know something else with the same hard surety.

I have to get out. Somehow, before he comes back, and regardless of what labyrinth I am trapped inside, I have to get out.



Chapter Fourteen

I rather liked swimming, even if I wasn’t much good at it, but scuba diving was a different thing entirely and it frightened me a little. Once—spring break in Cancun, if you can believe the cliché—I had gone snorkeling with some friends, none of whom I was still in touch with. It had been a disaster. I hated the taste of the mouthpiece, the way I had to bite down on it to keep the water out even as it kept my airway open. It felt weird, and the first time a wave lapped over the top and flooded my throat with salt water, I was done. I faked it, splashing around, even diving beneath the surface holding my breath, and managed to see some fish. That’s the one upside of being a habitual, even pathological, liar: you get good at pretending all kinds of things. An old boyfriend once told me I was the most fun in bed he’d ever had because I made him feel good about himself. There is, after all, more than one kind of performance.

But I wasn’t going to be able to fake scuba diving. Swimming on the surface and pretending you’d just come up when everyone else surfaced was fine when you were all just floating about with snorkels, but twenty, thirty meters down? Not so much.

“You’re gonna love this,” said Simon at the quayside as we boarded the boat at the dive center in Agia Pelagia. We had been driving for over two hours, and I had been getting increasingly restless and apprehensive along the way. We could have just donned our stuff and then waddled out from some beach, puttered around for a few minutes in the shallows, and come in, but Simon was in charge, so naturally there was a boat and state-of-the-art equipment, all hired at considerable expense for a serious expedition. “For those of you who are comfortable underwater and are used to the usual half mask and octopus, there’s these.” He indicated a set of gear, including air tanks, carefully lined up in the well of the boat, a substantial motorized thing maybe twenty feet long, with a little cabin, a wheel, and a burly local captain who kept leaning over the side to spit. “For the others, you get something a bit special.”