Fire on the Island

by Timothy Jay Smith

  “So you estimate this is about half of what falls off when you ring the bell?”

  “Or less. It’s hard to find all the pieces in the grass.”

  “So what if we call it a third?”

  “That would be more precise.”

  “You ring the bell how many times daily?”

  “Twice for services, and then for every hour.”

  “Yes, but you ring it one time for one o’clock, and twelve times for noon, and miss most hours during the night.” Or sometimes you ring it thirteen times for midnight after finishing off the communion wine, the mayor wanted to add.

  “It is true, of course, that noon is more wear and tear on the tower than one o’clock,” agreed the priest, “but don’t forget, I also ring it for early services on Sunday.”

  “Who could forget? Shall we say you ring the bell three times a day?”

  “Five would be more accurate.”

  “Four,” the mayor conceded, and again made some quick calculations. “Well, now we have that.”

  “Now we have what?”

  “The loss of mass.”

  “The loss of mass? What exactly does that mean?”

  “Let’s exactly find out.” The mayor searched through his piles of teetering files. “Here it is,” he said, and blew dust off a folder.

  “Here is what?” Father Alexis asked, his jaw clenched, growing impatient with the cryptic old man.

  “Your application for money to repair the tower. I recall your measurements were very precise.”

  “To the millimeter where I could.”

  “That should make my job easier.” The mayor flipped through the file until he found the drawing of the bell, and took a moment to study the priest’s notes. “Does the bell really weigh so much?”

  Father Alexis proudly clasped his hands on his chest. “That is why its resonance is so deep and satisfying.”

  “At the time you reported the crack to be eighty centimeters long. Has it worsened?”

  “It must be at least ten centimeters longer.”

  “To be on the safe side, shall we call it one meter?”

  The priest smiled unctuously. “Of course we should error on the side of public safety.”

  “Then we agree on that.” The mayor finished his calculations and leaned back in his chair. “We can also agree that you are not making a wild claim. In fact, given the evidence you have presented, it’s a mathematical certainty that the tower will collapse.”

  Father Alexis wanted to leap for joy. He had won his case! Instead, he reigned in his enthusiasm and simply said, “I knew we would eventually agree.”

  “In fact,” the mayor continued, “it is an engineering miracle that it has not collapsed already. I have no choice but to order you to stop ringing the bell until the tower is repaired.”

  “What?”

  “By ringing it, you are endangering the public.”

  “You have no authority over Church property!”

  “That’s right, but as you have so ably documented, by a fluke the bell tower is on municipal land. It is my legal duty to ensure public safety, so I am ordering you to stop ringing the bell. If you do not, I will have no choice but to arrest you.”

  Father Alexis was dumbfounded. “You would arrest me for ringing the church bell?”

  Mayor Elefteros grinned. “It would be a pleasure.”

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  THE FRIVOLOUSLY PAINTED CITY HALL was easy to spot between the stone houses. Nick swung open its gate and stepped into a garden of statuesque rose bushes, pruned and contorted over the centuries to grow as tall as small trees. A gardener, hidden from view on a ladder, clipped off the dying blossoms, blanketing the ground with their withered petals of exotic colors—eggplant, tangerine, aqua.

  “Kalimera sas,” Nick said, bidding him a good morning.

  The man peered around the tree to see him. He had a beakish nose and thick silvery hair, and was surprisingly old to be a gardener. “Kalimera,” he said back.

  “Is this City Hall?”

  “It is.”

  “Is Mayor Elefteros here?”

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  “No. Do I need one?”

  “Not today. Come with me.”

  The old man led them onto the veranda. He brushed dirt from his hands and swung open the villa’s door. A puff of cool air escaped. “Please,” he said, and motioned Nick inside.

  Passing under a chandelier, they entered a formal reception room with dark, heavy furniture pushed against whitewashed walls. Displayed on them was a museum’s cache of old black-and-white photographs. A spiral staircase in a corner descended to the basement. Another door led into an office streaming with sunlight, and filled with stacks of books and file folders on every flat surface.

  The old man removed a suit coat from a hook and slipped it on. “Welcome,” he said, extending his hand to Nick.

  “You are the mayor?”

  “We have no budget for a gardener, but the roses do not stop growing. So why have you come to Vourvoulos at this time of year? Most tourists have already left.”

  Nick reached into his daypack and passed him an envelope. “Did you write this letter?”

  The mayor, fingering it, smiled conspiratorially. “I wasn’t sure if I sent it to the right place.”

  “You did,” he assured him, and flashed his badge. “Nick Damigos, FBI.”

  “You came all the way from the FBI to help us?”

  “Actually, I’m posted to Athens. We have agents in every country that plays a strategic role in terrorism, human trafficking, or refugees, and Greece has a problem with all three.”

  “That’s not a very honorable distinction.”

  “It’s a function of your geography, and it’s America’s policy to help Greece however we can.”

  “America helped our island in the past,” the mayor told him. “After the second world war, during Greece’s civil war, we were a communist island, and still Americans gave us food. It saved many lives, including my father’s, and I was not conceived yet so I have always been especially grateful.”

  “Saving lives is why America wants to help again. Unfortunately Turkey is threatening to open the refugee floodgates. There could be a thousand refugees arriving here every day. Your Coast Guard station is too strategically located to be put out of commission for even one day.”

  “Greece would be a happier country if it were in a less strategic place.”

  “Then you wouldn’t have had Homer. Or the Trojan War, which brings up the other reason why the ambassador wants the FBI to help. Do you know what ISIS is?”

  “Yes. Islamic State.”

  “It’s threatened to mix jihadists in with the refugees. Maybe not in a Trojan horse but on a Trojan raft. If there’s any evidence that’s happened, the Coast Guard is going to play a much bigger role in intercepting and processing refugees before they’re allowed into the country. If the station is destroyed, it’s almost guaranteed that ISIS will flood this route with jihadists.”

  “So let me understand correctly,” the mayor said. “You want to keep the Coast Guard in operation, so you oppose moving the fuel tank?”

  “I want to stop the arsonist.” Nick picked up the blob of Styrofoam from the desk, gingerly so as not to dislodge the cigarettes still stuck in it. “Did this start last night’s fire?”

  “Something like that started every fire.” The mayor opened two file drawers to reveal his collection of them. Though sealed in plastic bags, the room immediately reeked like an ashtray.

  “Petrol bombs,” Nick gave a name to them.

  “You’ve seen them before?”

  “The design is on the internet. Every kid in Afghanistan knows how to make them. We dumped our trash in their desert, and they collected the Styrofoam, melted it in gasoline, set it on fire, and catapulted it into our camps. The ones from your fires relied on cigarettes to burn down and ignite the Styrofoam, which gave the arsonist time to get away before flames were
noticed. Did you date them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. I’d like to examine the first one, the fifth or sixth one, and last night’s. In your letter, you said you have proof that the arsonist plans to burn down the village. What proof?”

  “Perhaps proof is too strong a word.”

  Mayor Elefteros lifted a metal box out of another file drawer. Opening it, he showed Nick a pile of colorful worry beads spilling out of envelopes. They were the cheap plastic kind found in every tourist shop. “One of these has arrived after each fire.”

  Nick draped a string of orange beads around his thumb and deftly snapped it back and forth. “We call them worry beads in English, but I didn’t think that was their name in Greek. In fact, I make fun of my dad, calling them his non-worry beads. He always said he used them to relax, not worry.”

  “You’re right, they do not exactly represent our worries,” the mayor replied. “But our Greek beads—our komboloi—come originally from the Turkish tesbih, which are used for prayers, and most people pray because of their worries. So symbolically, I think it is no mistake that the arsonist sent these to me.”

  “I agree. There’s no reason to send them except to underscore a threat. No messages came with them?”

  The mayor shook his head. “Nothing.”

  Nick rifled through the envelopes to check their postmarks. “Were they all sent from Australia with no return addresses?”

  “Yes, and in fact they all came from Melbourne.”

  “Who has a connection to Melbourne?”

  “Almost every Greek has a connection to Melbourne. And we have a lot of tourists from there.”

  “Enough to ensure a letter with worry beads gets mailed back anonymously every month? Who else?”

  “Shirley’s from there. You saved her dog last night, didn’t you?” the mayor realized.

  “That would be me.”

  “She has friends visiting from Melbourne all the time. There’s also the boy Takis. His sister owns the bar in the harbor next to Shirley’s daughter’s restaurant. He went to Melbourne for a couple of years and came back a year ago.”

  “Before or after the fires started?”

  “If I recall, a month before. Then you might as well include the priest, too. He arrived two months before the first fire.”

  “Do you suspect him?”

  “Isn’t it enough to know that he’s a priest?”

  “So, we are already up to three suspects.”

  “I don’t think you can include Shirley.”

  “You’d be surprised who turns out to be guilty in arson cases. Why didn’t you mention the beads in your letter to the embassy?”

  “I thought it was better not to write everything.”

  “When the next envelope comes, don’t open it. Who else knows about them?”

  “No one.”

  “And your letter?”

  “Also no one.”

  “Not even Lydia?”

  “Sometimes it is useful to have one secret that no one else knows.”

  “You should be working for us. And that’s two secrets. Let’s keep them that way. As far as you know, I’m doing research for a novel. That gives me an excuse to ask questions.”

  Suddenly the church bell started ringing clamorously. The mayor stepped to his window and looked up the hill. He could see the massive bronze bell swinging in the damaged tower. “God damn that priest!” he swore.

  CHAPTER THREE

  LYDIA FUMED ALL THE WAY up the steep hill. A wildly ringing church bell unnerved people. It made them fear a war or other catastrophe, and every Greek village had known enough of both. Entering the churchyard, she aimed straight for the bell tower to confront the priest, only to discover that it was Koufos riding the rope up and down with a rapturous look on his face. She whirled around and headed for the church’s wide-open double doors.

  Father Alexis saw her advancing. When she broke stride to take a mint from the bowl at the entrance, he misread her mood to be non-hostile. Then their eyes met. Lydia rolled the mint in her mouth, so exaggeratedly she could have been doing yoga stretches with her jaw, before opening it to show the priest the gooey green glob on her tongue. He barely had time to register his disgust before she plucked it out of her mouth and plunged it back into the bowl. The priest’s sense of horror quickly turned to revulsion when the women following Lydia into the church blithely popped mints into their mouths. He hurried to the entrance, pushing his way through the milling crowd; there were no seats except for the boxy stalls along the walls that the old women always claimed for themselves. At the entrance he plunged his hand into the mints, and was fishing around for the offensive candy when Mayor Elefteros arrived. He furrowed his brow at the priest’s submerged hand.

  “Kali spera, o Kyrios,” Father Alexis unctuously greeted him, and held out his hand, hoping for a public display of the mayor kissing his ring. If he didn’t, the priest was already thinking how to use the snub against the old man.

  It never came to that. The gooey mint was stuck to the priest’s ring like a melted emerald. Horrified, he flicked his wrist to dislodge it but the glob was firmly attached. He reached into his pocket for a tissue to use to pull it off, and had to fight back nausea at the sight of its sticky green tendrils. He looked around. There was nowhere to dispose of it, and though tempted, he couldn’t just chuck it into the churchyard. He had no choice but to stuff the pestilent wad deep into his pocket.

  “Why are you ringing the bell?” Mayor Elefteros’s voice, naturally distinguished, rose above the hubbub. The villagers instantly hushed; the only sound was the bell’s insistent tolling.

  “We have an emergency,” the priest announced.

  “An emergency?” the mayor scoffed. “What emergency?”

  “What emergency?” Father Alexis opened his arms to embrace the villagers and pleaded, “Is it not an emergency when we are forbidden to ring the church bell?”

  “Forbidden to ring the bell!” a woman cried in disbelief.

  “It’s not possible!” another exclaimed.

  “Is it not an emergency when we are forbidden to bid God to hear our prayers?”

  “How do you expect God to hear your prayers, when I can hardly hear you?” the mayor demanded. “I order you to stop ringing that infernal bell!”

  “Infernal bell?” By his tone, the priest might as well have called the mayor the Devil incarnate. “You have no authority inside this church.”

  “As we all know, because you never tire of pointing it out, your bell is in a tower on public property. Until Athens relieves me of my duty, I am responsible for public safety, and based on the evidence that you gave me—and very precise evidence, I might add—that tower should have collapsed already. I order you to stop ringing the bell, or I will close your damn church!”

  The villagers took a collective intake of breath.

  “Did Dimos really say that?” someone asked.

  Another answered, “Of course he did! Everyone knows he was a communist.”

  “The church is on Church property,” Father Alexis reminded him.

  “Which I can close for posing a threat to public safety until the gods in Athens fight it out and order me to reopen it!”

  The two potentates glared at each other as the bell continued clanging, seeming to grow louder as the moment grew tenser. The priest had overplayed his hand on the loss of mass; he knew the mayor could close the church as he threatened. Flummoxed by the situation, he momentarily forgot the boy was deaf when he shouted toward the bell tower, “Koufos! Stop ringing the bell!”

  The boy didn’t stop. Someone snickered; it became contagious as people stifled giggles.

  Aggravated, Father Alexis shouted even louder, “KOUFOS STOP! STOP RINGING THE BELL!”

  “Einai koufos!” someone yelled. He’s deaf!

  There was an explosion of laughter.

  Stavros the fisherman bolted out the door, exclaiming, “And soon I will be deaf, too!”

  Momen
ts later, the bell stopped. When its last echo died in the stone church, the people looked expectantly at the priest who, confounded by how things were developing, experienced an unusual loss of words. “Let us pray!” he finally said, falling back on his most reliable line, and made his way to the altar.

  Lydia was having nothing to do with that. “I didn’t come here to pray when I have a restaurant to open. Unless, of course, God is about to shower us with manna from heaven. So if there is a reason for this emergency meeting, let’s start with that. Those who have the time can stay and pray later.”

  Father Alexis whirled around to face her. “Under the circumstances I thought we should pray for our safety.”

  “Our safety?” exclaimed a toothless widow. “Have the Germans invaded again?”

  “Nothing as serious as German soldiers, Granny,” Lydia assured her.

  “What about German bankers?” Petros, a smart-alecky kid, shouted.

  Lydia, ignoring him, told the old woman, “You’re safe, Granny. It’s only that Father Alexis is worried about his cracked bell.”

  “Cracked tower,” he corrected her.

  “He is what is cracked,” Stavros muttered, coming back inside.

  Everyone was laughing when Nick slipped in after him.

  “Despite whatever—or whoever—is cracked,” Father Alexis said, and smiled to convey his ability to laugh at himself, “until the tower is repaired, the mayor has forbidden us to ring the church bell.”

  “Because you convinced me it is close to collapsing.”

  “I might have exaggerated a little.”

  “Exaggeration or not, shouldn’t we fix it before it does?” a man asked.

  “That’s a question for Mayor Elefteros,” the priest said.

  “It’s a question for all of us,” the mayor responded. “We are a democratic community with limited funds. We have requested help from Athens for two projects: relocating the fuel tank and repairing the bell tower. On our own, we can only afford to do one.”

  “Athens is as bankrupt as we are,” Vassoula interrupted him. “Why do you think there is a new tax every day?”