‘This is it,’ Iolanthe said. ‘But as I said back in Italy, the Trojan War wasn’t fought at a city. It was fought at a vault. The vault of the royal banker.’

‘What about all those stories about the search for Troy by Schliemann?’ Nobody said.

‘Pleasant fairytales,’ Iolanthe said. ‘And fairytales that Heinrich Schliemann told repeatedly in order to make a lot of money. His story captured the public’s attention because of its compelling narrative—that Schliemann had used the descriptions of the landscapes in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey and Virgil’s Aeneid to find the location of Troy. But it was all entirely fanciful. He found something, sure. Some old buried walls over in Turkey.’

Nobody cocked his head. ‘So what do your royal history books say?’

Iolanthe grinned. ‘That Schliemann didn’t find Troy at all.’

Nobody said, ‘And I bet all you folks in the royal world were perfectly happy to let him and the world’s media think he was successful.’

‘We sure were.’

‘So what’s the truth?’

Iolanthe pointed at Tenedos Island, indicating one particularly large estate that ran from some low ocean-level cliffs back up a high grassy hill.

A white marble mansion lorded over an enormous vineyard and the broad lawn that stretched down to the cliffs. In the otherwise dry and brown island, the lawn was a burst of vibrant emerald green.

The whole estate was, Nobody thought, very sleek and new, more American in its styling than Turkish or Greek. It looked like something from the Hamptons.

This was exemplified by what lay at the bottom of the estate’s sloping lawn: an enormous gabled white boathouse embedded in the cliff face.

‘The truth,’ Iolanthe said, ‘is that this estate sits atop the ancient vault of Troy, an all but impregnable vault that was managed by Priam, the then Master of Coin to the four legendary kingdoms. The royal banker.

‘In his two great works, The Iliad and The Odyssey, Homer said that the King of Troy was an honourable man named Priam. Priam was indeed honourable because he was guarding the most important vault in the world, one containing innumerable treasures of the four kings.

‘The Trojan War was actually a colossal Greek mission to rob the vault of Troy—and it did ultimately end with a stratagem involving a gigantic horse. Only not as you probably think.

‘As part of his duties as the Master of Coin, even today the royal banker watches over the treasures of the four kingdoms, many of them priceless. These treasures, naturally, are now kept in more modern vaults.

‘They are no longer thick-walled treasuries carved into the ground underneath temples or castles. Rather, they are titanium behemoths located inside modern buildings with state-of-the-art laser scanners and biometric defences.’

Iolanthe paused.