She didn’t have very much that was new. She had some brief notes on gold mining in Colchis and the stuff about Menelaou. Still, it was a lead.
Lara ate her pasta as she leafed back through the pages of the Book. She was sure there was something else. She skipped back to the pages on transference. With nothing to do but wait until she could get on the train in the morning, Lara decided to unravel the strange notes on Ares and the Ten Thousand Immortals.
There were listings in the Book, including the gods of all the major ancient civilisations. Ares was listed in the Greek section. As Lara knew, he was the god of war, but not so much of honour and victory as of violence and devastation. She could find no connection to immortality or to the transference of spiritual energy between corporeal beings.
“Oh,” she said as she found another reference to the god. She took up her pen and made a margin note: “Dragon’s teeth warriors, see Jason and the Golden Fleece.” She had not known that Ares had been the progenitor of Cadmus, the water dragon from which the dragon’s teeth sown in a field had grown into an army of warriors. It was a story that intersected directly with one of Jason’s tasks in retrieving the Golden Fleece from Colchis.
“That can’t be a coincidence,” said Lara.
Then, she turned her attention to the Ten Thousand Immortals. She knew them only as an ancient Persian army, also known as “Anusiya.” She checked the wiki page she’d bookmarked and quickly found reference to them and cross-references connecting them to the Spartans, the famous three hundred who had fought the Persians. The Immortals appeared never to die, because, whenever a member of the fighting force fell, there was another to take his place, maintaining their numbers at exactly ten thousand.
Again, there was no reference to transference or to healing or genuine immortality. There was, however, a connection in time and place to ancient Greece and, therefore, a connection to the Golden Fleece.
Lara made more notes in the Book.
An hour had passed, and her pasta was cold. She threw it away, got a bottle of water from the fridge and some fruit that was still edible, and went back to the Book. She checked her work. There was nothing left to do but sleep and continue her research until she got on the train to Paris.
The trip across London and through the Channel Tunnel to the Gare du Nord was uneventful. The train was always busy, but Lara found her seat without incident, and despite her vigilance she saw nothing and no one suspicious.
It didn’t make her feel any better. A good tail shouldn’t be spotted.
Lara checked the platform of the Metro station, but didn’t recognise anyone from her train carriage. She felt oddly relieved. She wasn’t sure why, but she’d felt uncomfortable, as if she was being watched.
Lara boarded the Metro for St. Germain. The journey was less than fifteen minutes, and the train stopped frequently. She was in no hurry; she could get off if she was worried.
Lara looked around at the other passengers. It was a Sunday. There were a lot of tourists. That was inevitable; it was the international station, so most of them had come in on the London train. She craned her neck slightly to watch the last passengers get on the train. She recognised the man in the quilted windcheater. He’d been in her carriage, reading The Guardian . She took a shot of him on her phone. She didn’t like that he stayed by the carriage doors.
He’s just a tourist, Lara, she told herself. This is Paris. Everyone comes to Paris. He’s probably come to meet someone for a romantic weekend. Give the man a break.
Nevertheless, Lara moved further along the carriage, close to the next set of doors. The train passed quickly through Gare de L’Est and Château D’Eau. Windcheater didn’t move. Lara stayed on the train. As they left Gare de L’Est, Windcheater used his phone for a very brief conversation that Lara didn’t
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