The Minoan Cipher (A Matinicus “Matt” Hawkins Adventure Book 2)

by Paul Kemprecos

  Kalliste wondered how Hawkins had made out with Professor Vedrakis. She left the Antikythera gallery and walked through the museum to the garden in the classical exhibition section. She found a bench in a quiet corner and called Hawkins on her cell phone.

  He answered right away. “Hello, Kalliste. Sorry I haven’t called you. I had a few issues to deal with.”

  “That’s all right, Matt. I’ve spent most of my day moving out of my office at the ministry. I assume you’ve been busy talking to Professor Vedrakis.”

  There was a pause at the other end of the line, before Hawkins said, “Where are you now, Kalliste?”

  “I’m in the garden at the Athens archaeological museum. Why do you ask?”

  “I wanted to make sure that you were in a private setting. I’ve got bad news.”

  “Don’t tell me. The professor told you that the device was nothing like we thought it was.”

  “The professor didn’t have the chance to tell me anything, Kalliste. He’s dead. He died at Gournia, where we were supposed to meet.”

  Kalliste’s smile vanished. “Dear God. I always told him he’d have a heart attack digging in the hot sun.”

  “I wish it were that simple. The professor was murdered.”

  Struggling to keep her composure, Kalliste glanced around the garden to make sure no one was near enough to pick up the conversation. Tears brimmed in her eyes. Speaking with a catch in her voice, she said, “I want to know what happened.”

  Hawkins told her how he had found the professor’s body at the bottom of a ravine.

  “What makes you think he was murdered? He could have fallen.”

  “That was my first guess,” Hawkins said. “But there’s more to the story.”

  Hawkins described how a car had followed them from the Minoan ruins to Spinalonga, saying only that they had managed to elude their pursuers at the old leper colony.

  “The professor was a wonderful scholar and a gentleman,” she said. “There was no reason to kill him.”

  “Someone apparently thought there was, Kalliste. It’s no coincidence that he was murdered just before he was going to meet with Abby and me. Any idea how word of our meeting got out so fast?”

  “I can’t—oh…Matt.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “It was me. I told someone at the ministry. I wanted to rub it in the faces of those bastards. Now, because of me, the professor is dead.”

  “Don’t go there, Kalliste. You didn’t kill the professor. The creeps who tried to nail me are the guilty ones. Tell me who you talked to.”

  “A fat pig named Papadokalos. He’s a bureaucrat in the ministry. Totally dishonest and unscrupulous. He’ll do anything for money.”

  “Even act as a paid informant?”

  “Yes. I have no doubt of that. I’m going to rip his heart out and step on it when I see him.”

  “I’ll look forward to the stomping party but it will have to wait until we deal with more important matters.”

  “You’re right of course, Matt. I have an ancient scroll written in Linear A. It could be important. Is the machine functional?”

  “It will be when Calvin gets through with it. He’ll have this thing purring like a Swiss watch. We’ll need a quiet location to work without interruption.”

  “I know just the place. Remember my house on Santorini?”

  On the last night of the Kolumbo expedition she and Matt had celebrated at a taverna with a bottle of ouzo and wound up at the little marshmallow-shaped house perched on a cliff overlooking the volcanic caldera. He’d spent the night and nature had taken its course.

  “The house will be perfect. I’ll ask Cal know to meet us there,” Hawkins said. “Leave Athens as quickly as possible. Don’t tell anyone where you’re going, and make sure that you’re not followed.”

  “I’ll gather up a few things and take an island ferry. See you later today.” She sighed heavily. “I can’t get over Dr. Vedrakis, but I’m so glad that you are all right. Before I hang up, could you tell more about the men who murdered the professor?”

  “They were dressed in black and they had wide shoulders and narrow waists. One of them was bald and his scalp had been painted blue. Don’t know about the others because they were wearing hats. Ring a bell?”

  She sat there in stunned silence, then said, “I’m afraid it does, but it’s too fantastic.”

  “Nothing about this day would surprise me. We’ll talk about it when I see you. Be careful, Kalliste.”

  “You too, Matt.”

  Hanging up, she went back into the museum, climbing to the Thera exhibition gallery located on the second floor. The room held artifacts excavated from the ancient city of Akrotiri on Santorini. She walked past the cases of vases and urns, the graceful paintings of swallows and ships, until she came to a fresco that depicted two boxers dressed in loincloths.

  Kalliste stared at the painting as if in a trance. They had narrow waists and barrel chests; the scalps had been shaved and painted blue.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Hawkins swept his gaze around the waterfront and adjacent streets after the fisherman had dropped them off at the quay. He spotted the silver Mercedes almost immediately. They went over to inspect the car.

  “This is it. I remember the license plate,” Abby said. “We’d better get going. That thing can catch the Renault before we’re halfway back to the airport.”

  “Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen.”

  Hawkins took Abby by the arm and guided her across the street. “Where are we going?” she said.

  “To that mini-market’s wine section.”

  “Are you crazy, Hawkins? Those guys could be here any minute, and you want to get a bottle of wine?”

  “I never said anything about buying wine,” he said.

  Inside the market Hawkins picked a corkscrew from a rack and made a twisting motion with his hand. Abby gave him a ‘now-I-get-it’ grin.

  Back at the parking lot she leaned against the car, using her body to shield Hawkins, who knelt on his good knee and went to work on the Mercedes’ tires with the corkscrew. When they walked away, the shiny ride had four flats in the making.

  Abby got behind the wheel of the Renault. They were headed for the highway when Hawkins answered the call from Kalliste. After they talked, he filled Abby in on the full conversation.

  “I’ll text Cal and tell him to join us on Santorini,” he said. “We’ll try to get the device working there.”

  “I’ll call my company pilot and say we’ll be at the airport in about five minutes.”

  “You’d better allow an hour’s leeway. I want to swing by the archaeological museum.” He reached into his shirt pocket and held up the clay fragment from Gournia. “I’m hoping to find the jigsaw puzzle this fits into.”

  Abby drove past the airport into Heraklion. They found a parking spot near the museum. Matt reluctantly checked his knapsack at the security desk and they made their way to the Minoan collection.

  Hanging on the walls were the famous frescoes from Knossos. The colorful paintings were like a slide show of the past. Playful blue dolphins. The three fashionable Minoan ladies in the portrait known as, La Parisienne. Acrobats somersaulting over the back of a huge bull. A graceful female dancer.

  “It was a beautiful civilization, wasn’t it?” Abby said, gazing at the painting of the regal kilted figure known as the Lilly Prince.

  “It’s fascinating to contemplate what the world would be like now if they hadn’t vanished from the face of the earth.” Hawkins stopped in front of a display case and pointed at a small figurine. “But they had their sinister side, too.”

  Inside the case was the small ceramic figure of a woman wearing a tall conical hat, long flounced skirt, an embroidered apron and a tight open bodice that exposed her breasts. In each hand she gripped a writhing snake. Her eyes were round and staring as if she were under a spell.

  Abby said, “The Snake Goddess would have been a fearsome figure in r
eal life.”

  “I’d be more worried about her pets,” Hawkins said.

  “Things aren’t all that they seem,” a voice said. “The snake was a symbol of fertility and renewal in ancient times.” The speaker of these words was a pleasant-faced, middle-aged woman dressed in a museum staff uniform. The badge on her blouse identified her as Maria Constatinos, a museum conservator.

  “Thank you. That’s very interesting,” Abby said.

  “Didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but I heard your American accents. I studied at Boston University many years ago. I had a wonderful time, so I always go out of my way to speak to visitors from the U.S. Is there anything else I can show you?”

  “We were hoping to see the Phaistos Disk,” Hawkins said.

  “Of course. Everyone does.”

  She led the way to a glass case that contained a round object covered with signs spiraling clockwise toward the center. Abby said, “It’s smaller than I thought it would be.”

  “Many people say that. It’s just under six inches in diameter, made of fired clay. It dates back to the late Minoan Bronze Age, which would put it at the second millennium B.C., and was discovered in the palace at Phaistos in 1908. The size is deceiving. You’re looking at one of the world’s most intriguing archaeological mysteries.”

  “Are those Linear A symbols?” Hawkins asked.

  “Some people think they are, at least in part. But I’ll say this; whoever translates those little symbols will be the most famous person in the field of archaeology. I wish Dr. Vedrakis were here to talk to you. He’s our resident expert on the Phaistos Disk, but he’s off on a dig at a Minoan site. Perhaps another time.”

  Hawkins and Abby exchanged glances. He was thinking that the only way they would see the professor is if they took a cruise on the Styx, the legendary river of the dead. “Thank you,” he said. “That would be nice.”

  She said, “You may want to read the book that Professor Vedrakis wrote. It’s called The Minoan Enigma and is available in the gift shop.”

  “Thank you. We’ll pick up a copy on the way out.”

  Constatinos excused herself and went off to tend to her other duties. “That was damned eerie,” Abby said. “She’s going to feel awful when she learns about the professor. I wish we could tell someone.”

  Hawkins remembered the body sprawled at the bottom of the cliff and felt a sense of guilt, but things were moving too fast. “I don’t like it any better than you do, Abby. But an interrogation room in the Heraklion police station is the last place we want to be.”

  “I know,” she said with an angry shake of her head. “Well, at least you can tell me why we came here.”

  Hawkins reached into his pocket for the clay shard he’d found next to the professor’s broken glasses and held it close to the glass. Several figures on the shard matched an area on the disk. A fish, a head, and a bare-breasted woman similar to the ceramic figuring holding the snakes.

  “It’s a piece from the disk,” Abby said with wonderment in her voice.

  He put the fragment back in his pocket. “I recognized the figures from the last time I was here. Since we’re looking at the real thing, and it’s not damaged in any way, the piece I found must have come from a replica.”

  “Why would the professor bring a fake disk out to the site? Did he think we’d be able to decode that script with the device?”

  “He was pretty excited. My guess is that he thought it might be worth a try. Mostly, he wanted to take a close look at the device before he confirmed that it was a translating machine. Too bad those jerks got to him before he could do that.”

  “But he did confirm that’s exactly what it was, Matt. He had already concluded that the mechanism was a translator or he wouldn’t have brought the disk replica with him.”

  Matt gave his skull a light knuckle rap and kissed Abby on the cheek.

  “You are the smartest woman I know.”

  She looked at her watch. “I’m smart enough to know we shouldn’t press our luck. Let’s get to the airport.”

  Hawkins didn’t argue. They headed for the exit, stopping at the gift shop to buy a copy of the professor’s book and a replica of the disk. Hawkins retrieved the knapsack that contained the mechanism.

  As they walked back to the car, Abby said, “I’ve been thinking about Kalliste’s scroll, wondering if it will help us unravel the mystery.”

  “Which mystery?” Hawkins said with a shake of his head. “There seem to be an infinite number of them.”

  The pensive smile vanished from Abby’s lips. “The one that keeps getting people killed.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Molly rolled the raw hamburger into little balls that she put in a saucepan. She carried the pan outside to the shed behind her house. She flipped the latch, went inside and closed the door behind her.

  A mesh cage sat on a wooden table, visible in the sunlight streaming in from the windows. The cage door was wide open. A large bird with dark brown feathers hopped out of its home onto the table, opened its beak and fluffed its wings. Molly placed the pot with the raw meatballs on the table.

  “Suppertime,” Molly said.

  Several weeks earlier, Molly had been shooting photos in the forest near Mount Bachelor and discovered the injured bird lying on the ground, blood clotting on its wing. She had learned at the museum about Cainism, named after the Biblical brother Cain who’d killed his sibling. The oldest Golden eagle hatchling attacks its younger siblings, killing them or driving them from the nest.

  Sutherland had picked up the weakened fledgling and put it in her camera bag. Back home, she lined a wicker basket with a towel to provide a nest. The bird looked to be at death’s door but, like Lazarus, it’d recovered and started to eat the scraps of raw meat she fed it. Before long, it could stand, spread its wings, and clack its beak.

  The bird was too young to be released. If she brought it to the museum, it would be put in a cage. It would be well fed and cared for. Visitors would gawk and take pictures. But she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Like the eagle, she had been attacked and thrown out of her army nest.

  Molly knew she couldn’t keep the bird forever. This was no canary. The Golden eagle was one of the deadliest birds of prey in the world. Falconers used teams of the raptor to hunt down antelopes and wolves.

  The eagle now measured more than two feet from the top of its head to its tail and could easily grow to more than a yard. When it stretched its wings the span was nearly six feet. The four talons on each yellow foot were like curved daggers and the hooked beak was more than two inches long. Gold-colored feathers grew around the back of the crown and the nape. The white plumage of a juvenile bird were quickly being replaced by feathers of rusty brown.

  She had named the eagle Wheeling after the capital of her home state of West Virginia. The name fit the way the eagles flew—in wide, lazy circles. Since she didn’t know whether the bird was male or female, the uni-sex name would work for now. The bird was used to her, but if she got too close, it would spread its wings and shift from claw to claw. She didn’t know if Wheeling would attack when provoked, but this wasn’t a creature to be toyed with.

  Since moving to mellow Oregon, the emotional numbness of her post-Army days had ebbed. She was making connections at the museum, but nothing strong or permanent. She had done better at making friends with a fierce raptor. Pathetic. She would be sad to see it go, but she knew that it was time to release the bird.

  “Fixin to let you go by an by,” Molly said. “Better enjoy the room service while you can.”

  She left the shed and returned to the kitchen to toast a bagel. Tromping around in the woods with a load of camera equipment was good exercise, but she knew that if she didn’t modify her own diet she’d blow up like a tick having dinner. She didn’t want to be like her triple-chinned Auntie Flo who used to wash French fries down with Diet Coke. So, instead of slathering the bagel with an inch of cream cheese, butter and jelly, she only used a dab, skimming the mixtu
re lightly over the crust. It made her feel good, but she knew it was only a gesture.

  After breakfast she went into her office and powered up the computer. Dozens of photos needed editing and filing. She read the email Calvin sent after his visit to Amsterdam and put the photo project aside. Finding someone who had been in the armed services would take little effort. Some people saw hacking into a database as a sneaky intrusion. She pictured it more like parting curtains and stepping into the room. The trick was to make yourself invisible to those already in the room.

  She clicked on the Department of Defense site and parted the curtains wide enough to peek inside for her first sighting of Chad Williams.

  Within fifteen minutes a photo popped up on her screen. Even with his buzz haircut Chad Williams was good-looking enough to be a movie star. Digging around, she learned he had been injured in Iraq and spent several months in Walter Reed hospital. She got into the hospital files and saw that he had extensive plastic surgery. He was honorably discharged. There was no forwarding address, so she tracked down family listed in the DOD files. Unmarried. Only child. Father and mother deceased. Molly forwarded the information to Calvin and Hawkins and went back into the kitchen for another bagel. This time she left out the jelly.

  Seven thousand miles away from Oregon, Hawkins sat in the Gulfstream, reading the professor’s book. The cover art was a reproduction of the bull and acrobats fresco from the museum. Hawkins opened to the index section and looked under the R’s. He found Robsham, Howard, turned to the page and read the professor’s words.

  “Howard Robsham was a self-educated Englishman whose family fortune allowed him to pursue his obsession with the ancient world. Professional scholars worked from their offices and conducted research in libraries and archives. They never went into the field, and looked down with disdain at those who scratched the dirt from an ancient ruin with a trowel. They castigated self-schooled archaeologists, like Heinrich Schliemann and Arthur Evans, for the sometimes destructive methods of investigation they used. To the dismay of these desk-bound academics, amateur Indiana Jones’s had made the big discoveries.