Fiona shook her head. “A picture, but it was too dark. And as soon as Kenner saw it, that was it. He was out of there.”
Gallo pondered this. “So Kenner now has the most complete ancient record of Herakles’s deeds, and an object from his Ninth Labor.”
“He kept talking about finding the mutations that caused the monsters. Maybe he’s looking for the actual monsters themselves. Their remains, I mean.”
“That might explain why he took the Heracleia. Perhaps he thinks he can follow in the footsteps of Herakles.” She shook her head. “But the Lion skin was right there in front of him. I think we’re missing something. Something about that belt.”
Fiona squeezed her eyes shut and replayed the scene in her head once again. “He mentioned a ‘source.’ Is there something like that in the legend?”
Gallo thought for a moment before nodding. “There is. The monsters of Greek mythology are, almost without exception, described as ‘chthonic.’”
Fiona knew the word. “Subterranean. From the Underworld.”
“Yes, but in this instance, the term is not limited to their place of origin. The chthonic monsters were the literal offspring of Earth spirits. Nearly all of them, including all the monsters Herakles fought, were the children of Typhon and Echidna. They were themselves the children of Tartarus—the embodiment of the deepest parts of the Underworld—and the Earth goddess, Gaia. In mythology, Echidna is often called ‘the mother’ of all monsters.”
“That could be what Kenner is looking for. The original monster mom.”
“Possibly,” Gallo replied, chuckling at the nickname. “Echidna was said to live in a place called Arima, the Couch of Typhoeus, located somewhere in the Underworld. The ancients believed there was a literal entrance to the Underworld, but disagreed about where it actually is. Herakles’s final Labor was to capture Cerberus, the guardian of the Underworld, which would suggest that he found the entrance, if the story is to be taken at face value.”
“Did Herakles ever fight Echidna?”
A wry smile touched Gallo’s lips. “Not exactly. In some of the stories, Echidna and Herakles have children of their own, Scythes, Agathyrsus and Gelonus, the progenitors of the Scythian people.”
“Alexander and the monster mom got it on?” Fiona shuddered. “Eeew.”
“We have to be careful not to interpret the mythology too literally,” Gallo said. “These stories grew with the telling over a period of several hundred years, and often contradict each other. And don’t forget that Alexander was busy altering the historical record.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet that was one part of the story he definitely wanted to keep out of the papers. Do you think the Heracleia tells where to find an entrance to the Underworld?”
“It may. Unfortunately, Kenner has it, and we don’t.”
Fiona pondered that for a moment. “We could still look for it,” she said in a low, conspiratorial voice.
Gallo gazed at her across the top of her glass. “And how would we go about doing that?”
As Fiona explained what she had in mind, Gallo’s dark brown eyes began to gleam with anticipation. “Why, Fiona, darling, I do believe that’s the best idea you’ve had all day. Excepting dinner, of course.”
Twenty minutes later, after polishing off the last few bites of Tandoori chicken, Fiona and Gallo left their table and headed for the exit. Neither of them gave more than a cursory glance to the other patrons, all of whom appeared to be thoroughly immersed in their meals.
But their departure did not go unnoticed.
As the door swung shut behind them, one of the diners—a tall man whose dark complexion bespoke Moorish ancestry, a common trait among residents of ‘the Rock’—hastily rose from his table, dropped a 20 Gibraltar pound note next to his uneaten meal and headed for the door. He reached the street just as the pair climbed into a taxi.
Undaunted, the man hurried down the sidewalk to a parked sedan, got in and took off in pursuit. He wasn’t worried about losing sight of his quarry. He knew exactly where they were going.
15
Monrovia, Liberia