The Cup

by Alex Lukeman

  "The Grail would be a handy thing to have around if you got shot," Ronnie said. "I can think of times we could've used a miracle."

  "Like Indiana Jones in the movie," Lamont said. "Remember? Harrison Ford poured water from the Grail onto Sean Connery after he'd been shot by the Nazi and it healed the wound."

  "Don't forget the knight," Stephanie said. "He'd been guarding the Grail for what, hundreds of years? Drinking water from the Grail kept him from dying."

  "Must've been boring," Lamont said, "sitting there all that time with no one to talk to and nothing to do except look at a bunch of cups on a shelf."

  Elizabeth rapped sharply on her desk. "Shall we talk about the mission?"

  "Sorry, Director," Lamont said. Nick hid a smile behind his hand.

  "Stephanie made the connection to Sumela in less than a day, researching the tile. If she did it, so can ISIS. If the monks had the Grail, they would have hidden it with the icon and taken it back to Macedonia when they got the icon out of Turkey. Going to Greece is the next logical step, for us and for whoever might be after it."

  "How are we supposed to know who the bad guys are if they show up?" Lamont asked. "They'll probably look like everybody else."

  "He has a point, Elizabeth," Selena said.

  "This isn't any different than trying to ID terrorists in a crowd. There will be something that gives them away."

  "What do you want us to do if we find them?" Nick asked.

  "Find out what they know and who sent them."

  "Where's the monastery located?"

  "Macedonia, at the foot of Mount Vermion, around three hundred and fifty kilometers northwest of Athens. You'll fly into Athens and connect to a city called Veroia. The monastery is less than two hours from there. You can rent a car and drive the rest of the way."

  "And if we don't find anything helpful?"

  "Whatever you find, after that you're going to Milan."

  Lamont said, "I bet they've got good pizza there."

  Elizabeth gave him a look that told him he'd better be quiet.

  "What's in Milan?" Nick asked.

  "The Companions of the Holy Grail," Stephanie said. "It's a religious society, headed up by an Italian count named Mercurio. I went looking for something about that gold ring Bellini was wearing, the one you photographed in Sweden. It's only worn by members of the society."

  "Did you find out why Bellini was at Bergstrom's house?"

  "The Swedish police found correspondence between Bergstrom and Count Mercurio," Elizabeth said. "Bergstrom was negotiating with Mercurio for the Anastasius tile and Bellini was his representative. Mercurio had purchased stolen antiquities in the past, but only from the early Christian era. He wasn't interested in anything else."

  "He must be looking for clues, like we are," Selena said. "He wants to find the Grail."

  "Pretty big leap," Nick said.

  "What else could it be? He heads up a religious society that calls itself the Companions of the Grail."

  "Maybe he just collects things about the Grail. Lots of people collect things that interest them."

  "So he sends someone to Sweden to offer Bergstrom a stack of euros for that tile? I don't think so."

  "When you get to Milan, you can ask him why he wanted it," Elizabeth said.

  "What if he doesn't want to tell us?" Ronnie asked.

  "Mercurio's interest seems to be religious, not criminal. You'll just have to ask him nicely. Remind him about what happened to Bellini. He needs to know that he's stepped into the middle of something out of his league."

  "The last time we had a mission that took us to a church, we ended up in a hell of a firefight," Ronnie said.

  "Try not to do that this time," Elizabeth said.

  CHAPTER 21

  The flight to Greece was long and boring. From the air, Athens was almost invisible under a thick blanket of brown smog. On the ground, the polluted air stung their eyes. You could almost hear the smog eating away at the ancient stones of the acropolis.

  Diplomatic passports took them and their weapons through customs without a luggage search. They spent the night at a hotel near the airport. In the morning they connected for a flight to Macedonia and Veroia.

  Selena's fluent Greek smoothed the way everywhere they went. They rented a Toyota Land Cruiser at the airport in Veroia. When Selena explained that they had come to visit the holy icon of Soumela, she was met with smiles and advice. She spoke with the clerk for several minutes before taking the keys and a map.

  Once they were outside, Nick asked, "What was all that?"

  "She was very helpful. The monastery is on Mount Vermion. The nearest town is Kastania. The clerk has a cousin there who owns a hotel. She said it's the best hotel in town and we should stay there because the beds are clean and the food is good."

  Lamont said, "That sounds like a great recommendation. You can put up with a lot if the food's good."

  "I didn't know you liked Greek food," Ronnie said.

  "Hell, yes, I do. Like that lamb on a spit, what do you call it?"

  "Souvlaki," Ronnie said.

  "And that bread they serve with it."

  Selena smiled. "Pita bread. There's a lot more to Greek food than that."

  "Good. I'll try it all."

  They got in the car. It smelled vaguely of onions.

  Kastania was less than fifty kilometers from Veroia. It was a straightforward drive along a good highway that passed through a broad valley outside of the city before it started the climb into the mountains. After about twenty minutes they turned off for the town.

  The road was a typical, narrow mountain road with blind curves and sheer drops. A low guard rail formed the only barrier along the cliffs. In most places going through the rail meant certain death.

  Selena was looking at a brochure about Kastania she'd taken from a rack at the car rental.

  "It's a small town with only a few hundred people, set on the slope of Mount Vermion. The main attraction is that it's near the monastery."

  "We'll be there soon," Nick said.

  The hotel was easy enough to find. There weren't a lot to choose from. At the desk, Selena chatted away with the clerk, the nephew of the woman at the car rental in Veroia. He gave them keys to rooms on the second floor, old type skeleton keys marked by a large tag with the room number on them, the kind you left at the desk when you went out.

  The rooms looked out through arched windows over the plain below. A wide river ran through it. There were snowcapped mountains in the distance.

  "Nice view," Nick said. "I'll bet they fought some big battles on that plain in the old days. It's a natural. That river had to be an important artery."

  Selena came over to stand beside him. She put her hand on his shoulder.

  "It probably still is, and you're right about the history. Alexander's armies went through here, and his father's before him."

  "This whole country is soaked in blood. Nothing ever changes, only the weapons and the names of the generals."

  "That's really cynical, Nick."

  "You know it's true. They always say that people who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it but nobody ever seems to learn a damn thing. You look at what's going on in the world and it's the same old, same old. The people in charge keep making the same mistakes for the same reasons, and people like us have to clean up after them."

  "I've never heard you talk like this before."

  "I'm going to be a year older next month and I've been doing this my whole adult life. There's always another asshole waiting right around the corner, out to screw everything up for everyone else. I'm not sure what I'm fighting for any more."

  "We're on a quest for the Holy Grail! How many people can say that?"

  "You're a romantic."

  "Yes, and so are you."

  "What do you mean?"

  "You and Don Quixote, always going against insurmountable odds for the sake of truth and justice."

  "Someone has to do something abo
ut the people who want to tear down everything that's good," Nick said.

  "See? You're a romantic, just like Cervantes' hero."

  "Don Quixote tilted against windmills. They didn't shoot back with AKs."

  "No, but you don't carry a lance and ride a horse, either."

  Lamont knocked on the open door.

  "Hey, it's time to eat."

  Map provided by the Central Intelligence Agency

  CHAPTER 22

  Abu Abdul Haddad brushed away an annoying fly and gazed out a missing window at the sluggish waters of the Euphrates flowing past. He hardly noticed the unpleasant odor coming from the mother of rivers. The river stank of sewage and death. The treatment plants in the Syrian city of Raqqa had long since ceased to function.

  Sanitation was low on the priority list for funding in the current capital of the Islamic State. There were more pressing needs. Recruitment. Propaganda. Weapons and training. No one would complain about the smell if they knew what was good for them.

  The West liked to picture the leaders and officials of the Islamic State as ignorant barbarians, but Haddad had gone to Cambridge. Fluent in English, schooled in the psychology of the West, he'd been an important player in Saddam Hussein's ruthless secret police before the foreigners invaded Iraq.

  When Haddad thought about the rapid collapse of Saddam's regime, he saw Allah's will at work. The Americans had been Allah's instrument. Without the defeat of Saddam and the destabilization of the region that followed, the caliphate could not have come into existence. Now the bright flame of Islam was spreading across the world.

  Haddad was a key official in the murderous hierarchy of the Islamic State, in charge of foreign intelligence. He was marked for assassination by the coalition of infidels arrayed against the caliphate. It was a source of private pride. A CIA "capture or kill on sight" order was acknowledgment of his effectiveness.

  He adjusted a pair of old-fashioned round glasses perching on his large nose. For the third time he read the report from his spy in the Swedish police force. He could hardly believe what he was seeing. He had read the Arthurian legends at the University and knew the story of the Grail.

  A relic of Isa that is legend to the infidel. We had information about it in our hands and let it get away.

  A tall, thin man with a tangled beard that reached halfway down his chest entered the room. Asif Nawabi was from Afghanistan, a veteran of the war with Russia. He had been trained by the CIA to kill Russians. Now he killed the enemies of the caliphate. A shrapnel scar crawled across his forehead like a red worm.

  "Abu. I have heard from Sweden."

  Haddad swiveled in his chair to face Nawabi. "Was the box recovered?"

  "Yes, Abu. The police had it but it is ours now."

  "These Americans who interfered at Hussein's. Why were they in Sweden?"

  "The Swedish government requested a specialized team to advise them. They are a counterterrorism unit operating under the American president's orders. I have their dossiers."

  Nawabi placed a folder on Haddad's desk. Haddad opened it and began reading. His subordinate waited, used to Haddad's ways of working. After a few minutes, Haddad looked up.

  He tapped the photograph of Selena. "This woman. She translated the scrolls."

  "Yes."

  Haddad slammed his fist down on the desk. "That box should never have left the caliphate."

  "We didn't know the box was important, then. The man who sent it with the rest of the artifacts has been executed."

  "Yes, but the damage is done."

  "Does it really matter, Abu? The cup disappeared two thousand years ago."

  "It matters to the unbelievers. It matters to us. It is a relic of the prophet Isa."

  "The scrolls prove it existed," Nawabi said, "but they don't say anything about where it was taken."

  "Tell me, Asif, what would you do if you discovered information about a holy relic of the Prophet, praise be upon him? A relic enshrined in myth?"

  "I would be joyous to learn of its existence."

  "What else?"

  "If I knew where it was, I would look for it."

  "Exactly. That is what we are going to do. Look for this object so beloved by the Christians. And that is what they will do."

  "But we don't know where it is or if it still exists."

  Haddad took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He carefully placed them back and looked up at Nawabi.

  "That is true, we don't. It may not be possible to find it. But if it is, the Americans will try."

  "What about the Swedes?"

  "The Swedes!" Haddad's voice dripped with contempt. "No, it will be the Americans. If anyone can find it, it will be them."

  "What are your instructions, Abu?"

  "They will search for the relic. We will follow them. Let them do the work. If they find it we will kill them and take it."

  "As you wish, Abu. And if they do not find it?"

  "We will kill them anyway. Hussein was a friend of mine."

  A foul smell floated into the room from the river and Haddad wrinkled his nose. Bloated bodies filled with the gases of decay floated down from Aleppo every day. Sometimes a body would come up against debris and burst open.

  "Assign your team. Keep me informed."

  It was a dismissal.

  "At once, Abu." Nawabi left the room.

  Haddad thought about the Christians and how they distorted everything with their false religion. The cup that caught the blood of Christ was an important relic, but not for the reasons they thought. Christ was called Isa in Islam, the last prophet before Mohammed. When he reappeared, it would signal the coming of the Mahdi.

  The cup would be a powerful propaganda tool if it could be found. It would drive the Christians into a frenzy if they knew ISIS had recovered it. It would bring thousands of new recruits to the black flag of the caliphate. In the end, it didn't matter whether the it was found or not. The ultimate outcome was going to be the same.

  The Day of Reckoning and the final battle were coming soon.

  CHAPTER 23

  The monastery of Panagia Soumela was five kilometers out of Kastania, a pleasant drive from the hotel. The area around the church had been turned into a park with a large parking area for tourists and pilgrims.

  The building was cruciform in the Greek Orthodox fashion, the walls of brown and white stone, the curved roofs of red tile. Three soaring archways fronted the church. Smaller archways led to secondary entrances on each side. A massive round tower with long, narrow windows rose over the building and dominated the setting.

  Only a few cars were parked in the extensive lot outside. The church was a popular pilgrimage point but it was a weekday and late in the season. The chill of coming winter hung in the mountain air.

  Nick dropped money in a donation box as they entered.

  Lamont said, "Man, look at this place."

  His voice echoed in the cavernous building. A dozen people, tourists or worshipers, wandered about the church.

  "Someone spent a lot of money and went to a lot of trouble to build this," Selena said. "You'd expect to see a church like this in a major city with a big congregation, not a little mountain town. It's more like a cathedral than a church."

  Ronnie looked up. "How high do you think that ceiling is?"

  "I don't know," Nick said. "A hundred feet?"

  The ceiling was groined in medieval style, painted with religious figures and crosses. Rows of slatted wooden chairs faced the main altar. A wooden railing separated the public area from the altar. Behind the altar was an elaborate carved backdrop of dark wood, framing rows of painted icons. An enormous chandelier hung over the chairs. The air smelled of incense.

  "Where's the icon that causes miracles?" Lamont asked.

  Selena pointed at a separate alcove off to the side of the main room. "I think that's it."

  They walked over and stood in front of it.

  The icon was recessed inside an elaborate housing an
d lit on both sides. A curtain was pulled back to the sides of the painting. A chain stretched between brass posts to keep people from getting too close. A short pillar with a vase holding fresh flowers stood on each side of the painting. Beyond them, two enormous brass stands reached toward the ceiling, each with three tall columns mounted to hold candles. Four icons of saints hung on the wall behind. A crystal chandelier blazed with light overhead.

  Ronnie peered at the ancient painting. "Pretty hard to see what it's supposed to be."

  "You can just make out the shape of the Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus," Selena said. "Don't forget, this is supposed to be two thousand years old. It's had time to fade."

  "Okay," Lamont said. "We've seen the icon. Now what?"

  Nick pointed at a priest walking across the room.

  "That priest looks old enough to be in charge. Selena, go talk to him. Get him talking about how the icon was hidden and recovered. We have to start somewhere."

  She left them standing near the alcove with the miraculous icon, went over to the priest and greeted him. Soon they were in an animated conversation.

  Three men entered the church. Nick's ear began itching. He reached up and tugged on the mutilated lobe, where a Chinese bullet had clipped him on the day he'd met Selena.

  "You're doing that thing again," Ronnie said.

  "What thing?"

  "Pulling on your ear."

  "Just a habit," Nick said. "It doesn't always mean trouble."

  "Yeah, sure," Ronnie said.

  Sometimes when something bad was going to happen, his ear began itching. The worse it itched, the more trouble was coming his way. It was a gift or a curse, depending on how you looked at it. The gift had made his Irish grandmother an outcast in the old country, but it had saved Nick's life more than once.

  "It's probably nothing," he said.

  "Looks like Selena is getting along fine with the priest," Lamont said.

  "I'm more interested in those three that just came in."

  "They don't feel right to me," Lamont said. "One of them just looked at us, pretending he wasn't."