Solomon’s Jar

by Rogue Angel

  IT WAS MURDER that had brought them to Corfu. The island was a riot of hills, intensely green with olive trees, shaped like a horse’s haunch and snuggled up next to the Greek mainland in the Ionian Sea at the mouth of the Adriatic, altogether too close for comfort to the coast of turbulent Albania. Rumor had connected the discovery of King Solomon’s Jar to the mysterious, violent deaths of six local fishermen reported on the wire services worldwide.

  Annja and Aidan had started out that day asking about the killings. They first posed as crime tourists, what some pundits were calling the new ecotourists, people with a morbid fascination with forensic pathology from watching too many television shows.

  It was not an occupation that had ever appealed to Annja. While her own profession brought her into frequent contact with human remains, like most archaeologists and physical anthropologists, she had a marked distaste for dealing with specimens that were fresh.

  Not unexpectedly, the locals they questioned at first had regarded them with fascination mixed with loathing. Annja suspected that only Aidan’s liberality in buying drinks for the house wherever they went—with handfuls of cash to prevent leaving plastic tracks—kept them from having to fight their way free of some places.

  But gossip is a powerful force in human affairs, as Annja had discovered as a child. They soon started hearing a persistent rumor that the six crewmen who had been murdered on the boat were not the same six who had been aboard when the ancient jar was found. One member of the original crew had somehow survived.

  The pair switched their focus to trying to find that lone survivor. To cover the fact they didn’t know his name, Aidan claimed to be an Englishmen of Greek extraction who had heard rumors from an estranged branch of his family that a distant cousin had been involved in the horrible business of the fishing-boat murders. He told their listeners since he and his female friend had already planned a Greek holiday, he agreed to his aging mother’s request to check in on Corfu and see if they could track the poor man down and bring him comfort from his displaced family in the British Isles. It was thin at best, but as far as Annja could see, it was their only option.

  “WHERE MIGHT WE FIND poor cousin Spyros, then?” Pascoe asked.

  Nomiki cocked his head to one side. A calculating look came into his eyes. Aidan reached for his wallet. Not quite sure why, Annja stopped him with a touch on his arm.

  The Greek man spoke again to his friends. His manner was earnest. The ensuing conversation was low and intense. Annja had the impression of general disagreement, of men not accustomed to muting their emotions trying, for reasons unknown to her, to keep the argument from rising to the boisterous levels it ordinarily might. As they argued Aidan stood by smiling vaguely and humming to himself, as if oblivious to the passions being kept simmering below the surface.

  Finally Nomiki turned back to the pair. “The boat was the Athanasia.” He and his companions crossed themselves again. “It is to be found on a beach a few kilometers south of town. There you may find poor Spyros, as well. He cannot leave it behind, it seems.”

  Pascoe’s smile widened. “Splendid! Thank you so much.” Now he did dig in his pocket. “Allow me to buy a round of drinks for the house.”

  Nomiki leaped back as if afraid the mad young Englishman was going for a gun. “No, no!’ he exclaimed, holding up callused hands with fingers twisted from being broken repeatedly hauling in water-heavy and stiffened nets.

  Then he smiled. It was forced, ghastly. “It is not necessary. We do this as a favor to kinfolk of our friend Spyridon.”

  He spoke quickly to the others. They all seemed to draw back, then nod and smile fixedly.

  Pascoe shrugged. “Well, thank you all, and good day.”

  He waited a moment, then turned and walked out. Annja stayed close to him. She felt a tingling sensation at the nape of her neck.

  Out on the street an old man in a dark wool suit teetered past them on a bicycle. Away to the north bruise-dark storm clouds gathered above Albania. The sky was clear and achingly bright blue above them, the water a deep green inshore and a royal blue so intense it seemed almost self-luminous farther out.

  “Odd,” Pascoe muttered.

  “What?” Annja asked.

  “I’ve never known working men in a pub to turn down free drinks,” he said.

  “Maybe they felt it would be bad luck, for some reason. They were obviously still feeling the effects of the murders.” Annja said.

  “I can understand why.” He shrugged. “Ah, well. Let’s rent a car and nip down to this beach to find the boat. I don’t fancy poking around a scene like that in the dark.”

  Annja laughed. “What? You’re not superstitious, are you?”

  Aidan laughed louder. He thrust his elbow out from his side.

  After a moment Annja threaded her arm through his. Side by side they began the lengthy hike back to the car-rental office.

  THE HILLS OF CORFU WERE a deep and beautiful green. That was the good part. Looked at more closely a note of monotony came to the fore. Most of the island’s copious verdure, wild as well as cultivated, consisted of olive trees. They were the island’s main, close to only crop. Export of olives to the mainland and fishing were key sources of income for the islanders, although both came well behind tourism.

  Now the green, made into different hues and values by the island’s vigorous relief, had begun to take on a dark uniformity as the sun declined toward the rugged mountains inland.

  Gravel turned and shingle crunched beneath their feet as they made their way down the beach. At its southern extremity a boat lay beached on the shingle, heeled over onto its port side. Its bottom and screws had rusted red.

  “Athanasia,” Aidan said, looking at the characters painted on the stern. “That’s the boat we’re looking for.”

  “You know Greek?” Annja asked, a trifle suspicious, and ready to be more than a trifle put out if for some reason he had withheld knowledge and allowed them to struggle through the whole day trying subtly to interrogate people who spoke dribs and wisps of English if any at all.

  But he only laughed. “The dire consequences of a classical education,” he said. “I speak a few words and understand next to nothing of the spoken tongue. But I read it fair enough. Well enough to transliterate, surely.”

  He walked up to the boat and rapped on the hull. It did not ring so much but echo hollowly. “Besides, this is a big craft. Maybe thirty feet long. A substantial investment, especially on a poor island such as this one. Do you see any holes in her hull? I don’t. So there must be some serious reason she’s moldering here on the beach with nobody trying to take her to sea.”

  “I guess you’re right,” she said. “She’s a lot bigger than I thought she’d be.”

  “She’s not even being used to dry nets,” Pascoe said. Several other craft, obviously also fishing boats, bobbed at anchor not far out from the little beach. Wet nets had been spread out over upturned dinghies and stretched out on the shingle and held down with large rocks. “People are afraid of her,” he stated.

  Annja glanced toward the sun, which hung low and swollen above the steep green hills. “I guess we’d better take a look aboard while there’s still some light,” she said.

  Throughout the day they had not yet found it necessary to refer to the jar itself. This was good, Annja thought. Whoever or whatever had killed those men might still be in the area, or have spies on the ground. The guilty party or parties might or might not be fooled by touristy preoccupation with the macabre, or goofy genealogical enthusiasms. But the killer’s putatively pointed ears would definitely prick up if somebody turned up asking about the priceless, supernaturally powerful relic the hapless crew had pulled from the sea in its nets. Provided, of course, the murders had actually been connected to Solomon’s Jar, and not some semirandom element. Such as drug smuggling gone bad, as follow-up articles said the Greek police surmised. That was the catchall of bad, lazy, or simply stymied police investigations, Annja knew full well.
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br />   Scrambling over the port rail was easy. Climbing uphill into the wheelhouse was something of a challenge, although nothing daunting to a pair as fit as Annja and her companion. Pulling herself through the open hatchway, though, she came up short.

  The stench struck her like an invisible barrier.

  “Ghastly,” Aidan muttered. “I didn’t imagine it would smell this foul after so much time.”

  “Neither did I,” Annja said. Her cheek rode up in response to the stink, squinting her amber-green eyes. “The humid climate must keep the smell active. I guess that’s why we’re archaeologists instead of medical examiners.”

  “We’re wimps,” Aidan said, holding on to a stanchion right behind her. “I can live with that.”

  By force of will she thrust herself into the reeking dimness. Flies swarmed up to meet her. Their bodies fuzzed the air like a living haze. The sunset light shone almost directly through the cracked front port, yet it made little impression on the gloom within.

  She could still see enough. More than enough.

  The first impression, which did not particularly surprise her, was that someone had tossed buckets of dark paint liberally around the compartment. Copious buckets. Her stomach began a slow roll.

  You’ve seen blood splatter like this before, she reminded herself sternly. You’ve even caused it. So you’d better learn to face up to the consequences of your actions, no matter how righteous.

  Lest they become too easy. The voices of Roux and Tsipporah sounded in her head.

  Beneath the irregular coating of dried blood the compartment was a shambles. Chair seats and backs had been ripped in parallel slashes and bled yellowed stuffing. An obvious radar screen and other navigation instruments were smashed. The chart table lay broken against the bulkhead below. Charts and logs had been torn to pieces and strewed around. The papers had mildewed and crumpled in the humidity, and some had begun to melt into the varnished wood and painted metal of the deck and bulkheads.

  The sound of the flies was like an idling engine’s growl.

  “My God,” Aidan said, coming in behind her. “A charnel house.”

  “Literally,” Annja whispered.

  He gestured around at the shambles. “Did vandals do some of this?”

  “I doubt it.” She pointed to a volume lying open against the juncture of deck and bulkhead. A ragged streak of blood crossed it at a violent angle. “At least some of the destruction probably happened before the murders. Or during. Anyway, as you just pointed out, nobody’s tried to reclaim this vessel, despite the fact it’s still probably worth the life’s savings of an entire fishing crew. Who’d dare to vandalize it?”

  “Not I,” Pascoe said.

  Her foot began to slip on the canted deck. She reached out reflexively and grabbed the back of the pilot’s chair, which was fixed on a pedestal.

  She felt a shock as her skin contacted the slashed leather. It was as if she had completed an electric circuit, though not unpleasant. Inside herself she seemed to perceive a hint of golden glow.

  She felt a chill as if the sun had gone out instead of set. She shuddered.

  “Annja!” Pascoe exclaimed, exquisitely sensitive. She felt the reassurance of his hand on her shoulder. The strength of his grip surprised her. “Are you all right?”

  She shook her head as if shedding water. “Yes,” in a shaky voice.

  “What is it?”

  “It was here.”

  “The jar?”

  She nodded.

  “That’s what made you shudder like that? You looked as if you’d seen a ghost.”

  “Not seen, Aidan. The jar was here. I’m sure of it. But it’s long gone.”

  He nodded. “We reckoned that.”

  “It’s not the only thing. There was something here. Something I’ve sensed before. At Ravenwood Manor and the Wailing Wall. And, oh, on Mark Stern’s yacht, when Eliete von Hauptstark attacked me. I just realized what it is.”

  “And that is…?”

  “Evil.” The word had force precisely because she said it quietly, with utter lack of inflection.

  Pascoe looked around quickly. “Is it still here?” She could see from his frown that his trained skepticism was warring with his emotions. And losing.

  “No. All I’m feeling are the traces it left behind.”

  “Months ago? It must have been a pretty potent evil.”

  Wordlessly she waved her hand around the blood-splashed cabin.

  “Right,” Aidan said. “Forgive my being a git.”

  Pupils dilated more than the gloom justified, Pascoe’s eyes scanned the interior, even the overhead, which was likewise liberally streaked with blood spray. “Do we need to search any further into the bloody boat?” His tone said that he fairly urgently didn’t want to.

  “No point,” she said. “We’re not crime scene investigators, thank goodness. We know what we came to learn.”

  Before she finished the last word he had slipped backward out the hatch. She joined him before saying, with a shaky smile, “I’m just as glad as you are.”

  He stood with his feet at the joining of deck and gunwale, head down with chin on clavicle and moving side to side like a bull’s, drawing deep, quavering gasps of air in through his open mouth. She recognized the signs of a desperate fight against nausea.

  The wind was blessedly coming in from the sea. The warm, humid air felt almost air-conditioned on Annja’s face, which she realized was streaming sweat in a way the day’s exertion in the sun had not been able to achieve. The moist sea breeze smelled sweet, like life itself.

  Aidan clambered over the rail and jumped down to the sand. Then he reached up a hand to help Annja. She hid a smile at that. Some women she knew might have angrily spurned the gesture as chauvinistic—and it was certainly unnecessary, given that she was as strong or stronger than he was. It struck her as archaic, gallant and altogether sweet. Just the sort of thing, she thought, a well-bred and very handsome young British archaeologist ought to do. She took his hand and jumped lightly down beside him.

  He withdrew it as if it were hot. “Sorry,” he said, eyes down. “I think I’ve just been a right Charlie again.”

  “Not at all,” she said. “I thought it was sweet.”

  “What now?” he asked awkwardly.

  She looked to the west. The sun was almost out of sight, just a blazing white arc backlighting a rounded peak. Around them she felt the velvet mauve darkness, the cooling of the heavy air.

  “Better see if we can find our friend Spyridon before he drinks himself to sleep,” she said.

  He touched her arm, lightly and deliberately. “Don’t move,” he said softly. “We may have a spot of bother.”

  She turned to look at him. Light and movement drew her focus beyond him, north up the beach, to where an irregular line of torches slowly approached.

  They were borne by half a dozen or more shabbily dressed men. They held knives and makeshift clubs in their other hands.

  20

  “They’ve surrounded us,” Aidan said through clenched teeth.

  She turned to look south. A similar group approached from down the beach. Their dark, bearded faces were grim in the wavering orange light of their driftwood torches.

  “Nice traditional touch, that. Torches,” Pascoe said. “Pity it’s not an agrarian enough setting for them to have pitchforks. Still one supposes it’s the thought that counts.”

  Annja felt a stab of admiration for his insouciance. She felt little herself.

  She recognized the approaching men weren’t carrying torches to act out a classic monster-movie scene. Rather, it was because of the traditional role of fire in cleansing evil.

  “If we’ve trespassed, we apologize,” she called out to the nearer group, the one coming from the south. “We mean no harm.”

  Her eyes darted—her head unmoving so as not to reveal her desperation. The beach was isolated. A small scatter of shacks lay several hundred yards up the beach to the north. To the south a ju
tting headland walled it off. A few more little warped-plank buildings leaned in various directions across the road, a hundred yards or so inland. Help was far distant—if anyone in the vicinity would care to help them against their own neighbors.

  Pebbles crunched ominously beneath boots. The torch flames were gaudy in the heavy twilight.

  “You’ve done enough harm,” called a voice. To Annja’s shock it was familiar. The voice of Nomiki had coarsened to a raven’s croak. “You devils killed our friends, our kin. Now the time has come for you to pay.”

  With a scream of jet engines, an airplane lifted off from Corfu International Airport just across the narrow mouth of the inlet. It sounded to Annja like a lost soul fleeing.

  Someone cried out hoarsely. With a rush the fishermen were on them. Any doubts Annja entertained as to their seriousness were dispelled in a blink when one man took a horizontal swipe at her face with a torch. Its head blazed a meteor orange trail as she ducked back. A piece of her hair passed through the flame and she smelled the stench of it burning.

  She moved quickly, tweaking the torch from its wielder’s grasp and throwing it end over end to fall with a hiss and a fizz into the foam of a retreating wave. It was a small gesture, and only momentarily satisfying as more angry men crowded around.

  She punched the man who had swung the torch in the face. He sat down hard with a crackle of shingle and an aggrieved outcry. “Stay behind me,” she called to Pascoe without looking back.

  If the fishermen felt any Old World compunctions about attacking a woman they took care not to let them show. Annja pirouetted around a clumsy knife slash, smelling a waft of alcohol breath that accounted for much of the clumsiness. She dropped its originator sprawling and gasping with an elbow at the back of the neck. Somehow she sensed it as a club swung for the back of her head. She bent forward sharply at the waist. The club swished behind her skull. She mule-kicked straight back, caught an ample abdomen with hard muscle beneath and elicited a whoosh of forced-out air as its owner was launched back several feet.