The words had moved her. More so than she’d thought possible. She stared at the Ukrainian, who possessed a unique appreciation for the world.
“You’re but nineteen,” he said. “I remember when I first read Homer. It affected me, too.”
“Achilles is such a tortured soul.”
“We’re all tortured souls, Irina.”
She liked when he said her name. This man knew things she didn’t. He understood things she’d yet to experience. She wanted to know those things. “I never knew my mother and father. I never knew any of my family.”
“They’re not important.”
She was surprised. “How can you say that?”
He pointed to the book. “The lot of man is to suffer and die. What’s gone is of no consequence.”
For years she’d wondered why she seemed doomed to a life of loneliness. Friends were few, relationships nonexistent, life for her an endless challenge of wanting and lacking. Like Achilles.
“Irina, you’ll come to know the joy of the challenge. Life is one challenge after another. One battle after another. Always, like Achilles, in pursuit of excellence.”
“And what of failure?”
He shrugged. “The consequence of not succeeding. Remember what Homer said. Circumstances rule men, not men circumstances.”
She thought of another line from the poem. “What chilling blows we suffer—thanks to our own conflicting wills—whenever we show these mortal men some kindness.”
Her teacher nodded. “Never forget that.”
“Such a story,” she said to the class. “The Iliad. A war that raged for nine long years. Then, in its tenth, a quarrel led Achilles to stop fighting. A Greek hero, full of pride, a fighter whose humanity stemmed from great passion, invulnerable except for his heels.”
She saw smiles on some faces.
“Everyone has a weakness,” she said.
“What’s yours, Minister?” one of the students asked.
She’d told them not to be bashful.
Questions were good.
“Why do you teach me these things?” she asked Sergej.
“To know your heritage is to understand it. Do you realize that you may well be a descendant of the Greeks?”
She gave him a perplexed look. “How is that possible?”
“Long ago, before Islam, when Alexander and the Greeks claimed this land, many of his men stayed after he returned home. They settled our valleys and took local women as wives. Some of our words, our music, our dance, were theirs.”
She’d never realized.
“My affection for the people of this Federation,” she said in answer to the question. “You’re my weakness.”
The students clapped their approval.
She thought again of the Iliad. And its lessons. The glory of war. The triumph of military values over family life. Personal honor. Revenge. Bravery. The impermanence of human life.
The skin of a brave soldier never blanches.
And had she blanched earlier, when she’d faced down the would-be assassin?
“You say politics interests you,” Sergej said. “Then never forget Homer. Our Russian masters know nothing of honor. Our Greek forebears, they knew everything about it. Don’t ever be like the Russians, Irina. Homer was right. Failing your community is the greatest failure of all.”
“How many of you know of Alexander the Great?” she asked the students.
A few hands were raised.
“Do you realize that some of you may be Greek?” She told them what Sergej told her so long ago about Greeks staying in Asia. “Alexander’s legacy is a part of our history. Bravery, chivalry, endurance. He joined West and East for the first time. His legend spread to every corner of the world. He’s in the Bible, the Koran. The Greek Orthodox made him a saint. The Jews consider him a folk hero. There’s a version of him in Germanic, Icelandic, and Ethiopian sagas. Epics and poems have been written about him for centuries. His tale is a tale of us.”
She could easily understand why Alexander had been so taken with Homer. Why he lived the Iliad. Immortality was gained only through heroic actions. Men like Enrico Vincenti could not understand honor. Achilles was right. Wolves and lambs can enjoy no meeting of the minds.
Vincenti was a lamb. She was a wolf.
And there’d be no meeting.
These encounters with students were beneficial on a multitude of levels, not the least of which was a reminder to her of what came before her. Twenty-three hundred years ago Alexander the Great marched thirty-two thousand kilometers and conquered the known world. He created a common language, encouraged religious tolerance, spurred racial diversity, founded seventy cities, established new trade routes, and ushered in a renaissance that lasted two hundred and fifty years. He aspired to arête. The Greek ideal of excellence.
Her turn now to display the same thing.
She finished with the class and excused herself.
As she left the building, one of her guards handed her a piece of paper. She unfolded and read the message, an e-mail that had arrived thirty minutes ago, noting the cryptic return address and curt message — NEED YOU HERE BY SUNSET.
Irritating, but she had no choice.
“Have a helicopter readied,” she ordered.
Malone 3 - The Venetian Betrayal
SIXTEEN
VENICE
8:35 A.M.
TO VINCENTI, VENICE SEEMED A WORK OF ART. GOBS OF BYZANTINE splendor, Islamic reflections, and allusions to India and China. Half Eastern, half Western—one foot in Europe , the other in Asia . A uniquely human creation born from a series of islands that once managed to weld themselves into the greatest of trading states, a supreme naval power, a twelve-hundred-year-old republic whose lofty ideals even attracted the attention of America’s Founding Fathers. Envied, suspected, even feared—trading indiscriminately with all sides, friend or foe. An unscrupulous moneymaker, dedicated to profit, treating even wars as promising investments. That had been Venice through the centuries.
And himself for the past two decades.