“Thanks,” I said to her. She gave me a smile.
Pleistarchus led us to the camp of the Spartans. He didn’t stride so much as march. Men instinctively stepped out of his way, and Pleistarchus barely noticed. He went straight past the guards at the entrance-one of whom glared at Diotima-and stopped at the opened flap of his tent to motion us inside.
“No one disturbs or hears us,” he ordered the guard within. The man nodded and went out. The tent was furnished with one camp bed and one travel chest. That was it. The king of Sparta traveled with less than Diotima. In one corner, a small folding table and a camp stool. Only one stool. We stood in the middle space to talk.
“Gentlemen-and lady-we have a problem,” Pleistarchus said. “I find there are things I must tell you, if you are to succeed. In fact, the security of Sparta may depend upon it. You-Nicolaos? — yes, before I continue, you must swear by Zeus and Athena that you will not reveal what you hear to any man, and particularly not to any Spartan. Do you agree?”
“Yes, Pleistarchus.” It meant I couldn’t use what I learned as evidence before the Judges of the Games, but it might lead me to the killer. I would worry about evidence later. “May Zeus destroy me if I reveal what you tell. May Athena persecute me.”
Diotima nodded. “Artemis, hear my oath,” she said.
“What do you say, Markos? Can these Athenians be trusted to keep an oath?”
Markos looked at me as if I were livestock for sale. After a moment he said, “Yes, Pleistarchus, Nicolaos is an honest man. Surprisingly honest, considering the work he’s in.”
Pleistarchus grunted. “Whoever heard of an honest Athenian?”
“Be it so, Pleistarchus, you can trust him.”
Pleistarchus shook his head and said to me, “The fact is, if you and Markos continue to blunder about as you have, if you make a mistake, it could start a war and thousands will die.”
It was so similar to what Pericles had said that Diotima gasped. Pleistarchus noticed her reaction.
“The Spartans fear Athens, young lady. That’s not something I’ll admit in public, but the Spartans fear your democracy. If it spreads, what will happen to the Spartan way of life? Some demand war at once, before Athens becomes stronger. The ephors are among those for war. Others hold that it is none of our business, as long as Athens does nothing to upset the balance in the Peloponnese, which is ours by right of strength.”
“I understand, Pleistarchus,” I said, and Diotima nodded.
Pleistarchus said, “Do you Athenians know what the hippeis are?”
“It means ‘cavalry’ … ‘knights,’ ” I said.
“So it does, a title of great honor. The hippeis are elite soldiers. The best of the best. In war they’re our scouts, trained to act independently; in peace the hippeis are the royal bodyguard.”
“Many cities have a similar system,” I said, wondering why Pleistarchus told me this.
“This much all men know,” he went on. “That they are scouts and bodyguards. But the knights of Sparta have a third job. One of great importance.”
“A third job? Don’t these people have lives?”
“No. Combine the first two tasks and what do you get?”
“I have no idea.”
“In war the knights gather information about the enemy. In peace they guard the state.”
Diotima said, in surprise, “Men who gather information to protect the state!”
Pleistarchus nodded. “The knights are Sparta’s security service.” He paused. “Markos is one of their best.”
Which made Markos the best of the best of the best. Suddenly I felt less confident of victory.
Markos smiled at me. “Surely this is no surprise, Nico. My job is much the same as yours. I wager we have the same skills and the same expertise.”
Except I was a sole individual, with little or no support and no official position, forced to live by my wits and reliant on the largesse of Pericles. I noticed King Pleistarchus showed not the slightest surprise at Markos’s revelation about my own profession. Obviously Markos had reported on me to King Pleistarchus.
Pleistarchus continued, “Now as to what I’m about to tell you … you have sworn never to reveal. Not under any circumstances.”
“Then why tell us?”
“Because if I don’t, you will probably die.”
It sounded like a good reason to me.
“Within Sparta there is a tradition-closely kept-which we call the krypteia.”
“The ‘secrets’?”
“Just so. The krypteia is a rite of passage for Sparta’s most promising young men from across the entire army, the ones likely to become officers. They’re sent alone into the countryside with only a dagger, no food or water, and orders to survive without being caught.”
“What if they’re caught?”
“The failures are beaten to within an inch of their lives. There’s no place in our officer class for losers.”
That made my own army training look like a picnic.
Pleistarchus said, “Each young man is required to kill a few of our slaves, the people we call helots. It’s our way of getting the young men used to killing before they have to do it much more dangerously on a battlefield.”
I looked to Markos in astonishment. “You did this? You murdered a helot for practice?”
Markos shrugged. “It’s what we do.”
“But-”
“It’s not murder,” Pleistarchus said. “Every year, at their inauguration, the ephors declare war on our own helots, so that it’s legal to kill them at any time.”
“Oh, well! That’s all right then!”
“It’s been this way for centuries, Nico,” Markos consoled me. “If it makes you feel better, we only target the troublemakers who would have gotten themselves killed sooner or later anyway.”
Pleistarchus went on, “A few of the young men, the ones who demonstrate unusual aptitude at the helot-killing part of the test, and who are judged to possess the personality to match, are recruited by the ephors to join a secret organization of the same name: the krypteia, the Secrets. When something unsavory has to be done for the good of the state, the ephors turn to the krypteia. Like the hippeis, the krypteia serves the state, but where the hippeis exists to secure the state in the light of day, the krypteia works in the dark to … er …”
“Eliminate problems?” I suggested.
“Just so. I don’t understand what’s happening, Nicolaos son of Sophroniscus, but when you tell me ‘the secrets’ killed Arakos, you are probably thinking of hidden information. But it might mean something quite different.”
I asked, “Does Arakos have anything to do with this?”
Markos said smoothly, “Arakos was neither a knight nor, as far as we know, a member of the krypteia. He was just a big oaf who was good at hitting people.”
“Markos is offensive but correct,” Pleistarchus said. “Arakos was an outstanding if slightly dimwitted warrior-a fine man in the ranks, but not officer material. Now he’s become an excuse for war for those who want it. If there’s any danger of you exonerating the Athenian, it will be cause for war.”
So if I saved Timo, who was only one man, then many thousands of men might die in battle. Terrific.
Diotima said to King Pleistarchus, “Why don’t you simply ask this krypteia organization if they’re involved? And if they’ve acted without orders, why can’t you simply order the krypteia to stop whatever they’re doing?”
“The krypteia wouldn’t obey me, even if I knew who they were.”
“You don’t know?”
“As I command the hippeis, so the ephors command the krypteia. They’re entirely different units within Sparta. Only the ephors know the members of the krypteia. I won’t risk open conflict with the ephors, neither here at Olympia nor back in Sparta. When you three walk out of this tent, you’re on your own.”
“Are Skarithos and his friends krypteia?”
Markos said, “I should hope the ephors have better taste than that. But who knows?”