From the Devil's Farm

by Leta Serafim

  Earlier he’d called the archeologist on Chios, Jonathan Alcott, and asked him what he knew about Richard Svenson. “You’ve worked in Boston. Ever heard of him?”

  “Lots of professors in Boston. I’ll have to check him out and get back to you,” Alcott said. “How soon do you need the information?”

  “As soon as you can get it.”

  “Why? What’s he done?”

  “He’s a suspect in a murder case. A ten-year-old Syrian boy was killed here two days ago. Crime was oddly staged. Some kind of ritual, it looked like. There was red ocher sprinkled around, and although the kid’s throat was cut, there was very little blood.”

  “The way the ancients sacrificed bulls?”

  “Exactly. Papa Michalis keeps insisting it was a human sacrifice.”

  “Seems unlikely an American professor would be involved. Do you have any other suspects?”

  “Two thugs from Chrisi Avgi. You familiar with a place called Thanatos? That’s where it was.”

  “Ah, Thanatos,” Alcott said. “It’s an anomaly, that one. Theory is it was built by a small, breakaway sect from the eastern Aegean. A rogue group with roots in Phoenicia, which evolved over time or degenerated—the vote’s not in yet—into a separate and distinctive culture. Supposedly Thanatos was sacred to them in much the same way Delos was to the ancient Greeks, or so the story goes—a great shrine, a place of pilgrimage and worship, the very center of their universe.” Alcott paused. “You need to bear in mind, this is all conjecture. I’m just passing on what was discussed at a conference I attended. If the site was used as extensively as it was thought, there would have been substantial traffic in the area. And there was talk of exploring the seabed off the coast of Sifnos, but nothing ever came of it.”

  Svenson had a Zodiac, Patronas remembered. Maybe he hadn’t been using it for water sports as he claimed, but instead had been diving for artifacts.

  Alcott never spoke, he lectured, and this time was no exception. “Phoenician cosmology is very interesting,” he went on. “They worshipped a trinity. El, their primary god, was the protector of the universe. You might know him by his biblical name, Baal.”

  “The one Moses sacrificed the calf to?”

  “Not Moses, his brother Aaron. But yes, the very same. Baal was around for a long time, his name evolving into Ba’al Zabub, a derogatory term in Hebrew, meaning ‘Lord of the Flies.’ Later still in the New Testament he became Beelzebub, or Satan, Lord of Darkness.”

  Writing this information down, Patronas underlined it. Satan had once been worshipped on Thanatos. The thought chilled him.

  “His son, Malgarth or Moloch as he was sometimes called, was known as ‘the rider of the clouds.’ It was also said that he slew dragons.”

  “Dragons? You mean like Saint George?”

  “Similar. I’ve long thought the martyrdom of St. George echoed the coming of Christianity, the dragon he supposedly killed being the old faith—paganism if you will—and the maiden he rescued, an aborted human sacrifice. The story originated in Asia Minor in the tenth century, but it might well be older.”

  “Is the legend from Phoenicia?” Patronas asked, remembering what the priest had said.

  “No, no. Cappadocia and Georgia.”

  Suddenly, Alcott had Patronas’ attention. Twice in forty-eight hours. It couldn’t be a coincidence.

  “Did this sect practice human sacrifice?”

  “Hard to say. Like I said, we don’t know much about it. Gods never die. They change form and are worshipped under different guises, but they endure. And our prayers to them don’t die, either. What do you think the Minoans prayed for? For the earth to stop trembling, for it to leave them in peace.”

  “What do you pray for?” Patronas asked, curious.

  “The health of my children. Good fortune. The usual things.”

  “You never pray for your enemies to suffer?”

  Alcott gave a little laugh. “That’s the problem with Christianity. There’s no room for malice.”

  “I found other bones when I was processing the scene,” Patronas said. “The skeleton of a baby. Could be the bones date from the time you’re talking about.”

  News of the bones intrigued Alcott. He said he’d arrange for someone to excavate the site if they were indeed ancient. “They may well prove significant. At the very least, they will strengthen the belief that Thanatos was an important Phoenician religious center.”

  “Coroner’s processing the bones now,” Patronas said. “If he can’t establish how old they are, he is to send them on to the University of Athens and have the Department of Archeology run radiocarbon testing on them.”

  “Aside from the Spartans, the only other people who killed babies were the Phoenicians, so that would fit. But that won’t help you, not with the current case. They vanished more than twenty-five hundred years ago, long before the time of Christ.”

  Patronas’ sense of foreboding deepened. ‘They’re back,’ the old man had said, according to Nikolaidis, ‘the devils who worship in that place.’

  According to his mother, a pious woman, there was only one true faith, and it was Greek Orthodoxy. Everything else was bunkum. And to an extent, Patronas still subscribed to many of its tenets. Not in the Bible per se, but in the struggle between good and evil it depicted, the eternal struggle for mastery over the human soul.

  Given what he’d seen on Thanatos, evil had just won a round.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Live without sorrow.

  —The Delphic Oracle

  Leaning back in his chair, Patronas closed his eyes and sat there, thinking. Finally he picked up Svenson’s passport and reviewed it, glad that he’d had the foresight to hang on to it. Extraditing a man like Svenson from the United States would take time, if it could be accomplished at all. He’d made copies of the students’ passports and returned them already, but something about the professor still bothered him and he wanted to keep him in Greece.

  Svenson’s passport appeared to be authentic: the colored photograph bearing the appropriate signature, the face staring back at him suitably neutral as required by law. Richard Svenson, born in Marlboro, Massachusetts, in 1964. The passports of the American students were equally innocuous: Benjamin Gilbert, nineteen years old, McLean, Virginia; Charles Bowdoin, also nineteen, Wellesley Hills, Massachusetts; and Michael Nielsen, the runner, twenty years old, San Diego, California. Lydia Pappas had also surrendered her passport, smiling as she did so, repeating what she’d told Patronas earlier, “A clear sky has no fear of lightning.” She was thirty-nine, according to the document, born in Piraeus, Greece.

  According to his notes, Costas and Achilles Kourelas were also from Piraeus. He hadn’t kept their Greek identification cards, only copied down the information. Given their limited resources, they wouldn’t get far if they fled.

  Patronas laid the papers out on the table and shifted them around as if playing solitaire. The day hadn’t been a complete loss. Tembelos had caught Achilles Kourelas on film attacking him with the wrench, so that monster would eventually go to jail. The only question was when. The evidence was irrefutable.

  The table was littered with faxes from Athens detailing Costas and Achilles Kourelas’ sorry history and Richard Svenson’s exalted one, the professor’s curriculum vitae meticulously translated into Greek. Stathis had seen to that.

  There was also a stack of documents from Interpol, along with the standard questions. Patronas had inquired about ritual killings and the response from the agency had been overwhelming, ten pages or more. ‘Human sacrifice was not unknown in Europe,’ the first sentence read. A satanic group, the Friends of Hekate, was believed to be responsible for a number of disappearances in England between 1960 and 1980, but no children had been taken during that time, only adults. Another group, The Sinister Calling, was known to perform ritual sacrifices in caves or on isolated hilltops. Following the rite, the priest would wash his hands in the victim’s blood. But far more prevalent, according
to Interpol, were acts of sacrifice by recent immigrants from the Indian subcontinent and sub-Saharan Africa. The cases were similar to the one Achilles Kourelas had spoken of. In 2005, three people from Africa were found guilty in England of torturing an eight-year-old girl they thought was a witch. Not long after, if Interpol was to be believed, there’d been a handful of slayings to appease the Indian god, Kali, a sword-wielding monster. The latter was an old tradition, evidently. According to what he’d read, a boy was killed every day at the Kali temple in Calcutta two hundred years ago, and the tradition remained alive to this day in backward parts of India.

  Patronas shoved the papers off to one side. Not only did they depress him, but they would not help with the case. Calcutta was a long way off, as was the temple of Kali. And supposedly, the only god worshipped on Sifnos was a benevolent one.

  He bit into one of the tyropitas and sat there, chewing. A stack of the victim’s photos occupied the center of the table. He eyed them guiltily. Forty-eight hours gone and he’d accomplished nothing—found no clues, no motive, no killer.

  Making a decision, he called the harbor police. “I have seven persons of interest in the killing of the child at Aghios Andreas,” he told the dispatcher. “The first, Richard Svenson, is an American academic, a teacher at that summer study here. He’s staying at Leandros in Platys Gialos with three of his students. I want someone on them day and night. Your man can sit in a chair outside their rooms if he wants. I don’t care if the Americans see him. Might be good if they did, might trigger something. I also need to keep track of two local men, Costas and Achilles Kourelas.”

  “No need to tell me where they live,” the dispatcher said. “Everybody on Sifnos knows those two. They’re famous.”

  “Also a woman named Lydia Pappas. She’s Greek, but works in the States. She’s staying in the same place as Svenson.”

  “Sorry. Can’t track her, too. I don’t have enough people.”

  “Very well. Have the man monitoring Svenson keep an eye on her and I’ll take over for him later tonight.”

  Like a faithful dog, he’d keep watch outside her door. Tell her he was there to protect her. Point out the constellations, if he got the chance, the vastness of space. Run his hands through her autumn-colored hair.

  “Focus,” he told himself.

  Writing in his notebook, he worked out the surveillance schedule. They’d alternate with the harbor police and observe the suspects in eight-hour shifts. He’d nap in the afternoon and work the last one, sit outside and watch the apartments at Leandros until the sun came up.

  A few minutes later, the dispatcher called back. All seven suspects were now being monitored. “I’ve got one officer at Leandros, another outside the house where Costas and Achilles live. That should do it until tomorrow.”

  Patronas then asked him to pull the registration on Svenson’s Zodiac. Upon arrival in Greek waters, all boats were required by law to check in with the port authorities, customs, and health officials as well as immigration and currency control. The bureaucracy was onerous: a roster of passengers and crew members had to be presented, a radio license, and the boat’s original registration form as well as insurance papers. In addition, if Richard Svenson was indeed scuba diving as Lydia Pappas had said, he would have had to secure written permission for that as well. Something else to check.

  That said, they didn’t stamp passports upon entry to Greece by boat. Patronas wasn’t sure the rules even applied to Zodiacs, given that the inflatable boats were often used as tenders to larger vessels and as such, were virtually impossible to track. Still, it was a place to start.

  Nikolaidis had phoned to say he’d checked around and found out that Sami Alnasseri had worked at a gas station on the road to Kato Petali.

  “What’s interesting is that Achilles Kourelas occasionally worked there, too,” he said.

  “So they knew each other.”

  “According to the owner, Kourelas kept to himself. He never spoke to Sami or any of the other migrants. ‘Treated them like lepers,’ the owner said.”

  Patronas was on his third tyropita when his cellphone rang again. His uniform was flecked with filo, and he dusted himself off before answering, fearing it might be Stathis, calling to check up on him. Once his boss had called him in the middle of the day and insisted on ‘face time,’ only to discover Patronas was still at home in his pajamas—yellow silk pajamas that were far too big for him. Who knows what had possessed Dimitra to buy them? Seeing them, his boss had laughed his head off and docked him a full day’s pay. This had been before the divorce. Now he no longer had a wife, yellow silk pajamas, or a place to lay his head.

  “Police?” a woman asked. She sounded frightened.

  Patronas recognized the caller’s voice immediately. It was Noor from the camp, Sami Alnasseri’s aunt.

  “Yes, this is the police,” he answered. “Where are you?”

  “In the street,” she said. “I call from the payphone.”

  Patronas knew exactly where she was standing. There was a yellow payphone on the sidewalk in the middle of the Platy Yialos. She might be far away from the migrant camp, but she was still exposed, a Muslim woman in a hijab, standing under a streetlamp in the middle of the night.

  There was a long silence and Patronas assumed she’d run out of coins when suddenly she spoke again. “I have a box of Sami’s things. Is not much, but I leave for you.”

  Before she hung up, he begged her once again to describe Sami’s friends. “At least tell me what language they spoke.”

  “He only talk of these men. They never come to the camp.”

  So the friends were older and they were not migrants.

  “I know this is hard for you,” Patronas said, “but did Sami ever tell you where they were from, if they were Greek?”

  “No. Sami, he never say.”

  “Are you sure? It’s important. Otherwise, we may never find Sami’s killer, never get justice for him.”

  “There is no justice,” she said, starting to cry. “Not for us. We are lost. My country, my people, and now little Sami. All lost. Everybody lost.”

  Hating himself, Patronas continued to pressure her. “We’d like you to fly to Athens and identify your nephew’s body, make the necessary arrangements for his funeral. I don’t know what your customs are, but I will help in any way I can.”

  “I cannot,” she said simply.

  “We’ll pay your way.”

  “It is not the money. I am a woman. I am forbidden.”

  “It’s important. Without you, Sami will be buried in Athens and forgotten. Without mourners, with no one to cry for him.”

  “I will cry for him.” Her voice was thick with tears. “I will cry for Sami.”

  A moment later the line went dead.

  “Hello!” Patronas shouted. “Hello? Are you there?”

  But all he heard was the sound of the receiver banging against the pole.

  Exhausted, Patronas stowed his notebook in his briefcase, turned off the light, and left the murder room, his footsteps echoing down the empty corridor. He wondered what the woman, Noor, was so afraid of, if it was the killer or someone else in her life. She hadn’t mentioned a husband, but maybe he was in the picture. Could be he didn’t want her speaking to the police. Men dictated what women could do in those countries—how much they had to cover their faces, whether or not they could leave the house.

  How he wished he’d had that power in his own marriage—the chance to veil his wife from head to toe and boss her around. He shook his head at the thought. As if anyone, least of all him, could have contained that woman. Dimitra was like a human blast furnace when she got going, Would singe the hair right off your head—other parts of you, too, if you weren’t careful. Breathing fire, she’d unman the most stalwart male. He’d never stood a chance.

  Overcome by melancholy, he remembered the night she’d told him the reason they had no children was because of him, that he was sterile, a mule in every sense. She’d been to
a doctor in Athens, been tested, and she ‘knew.’ How she’d gloated as she said it.

  He closed his eyes. How did I ever endure all those years with her?

  Idly, he wondered if what she’d said was even true or if she’d just said it to hurt him. Dimitra did that. She used her tongue to maim. He’d never followed up with a doctor to verify what she’d told him. Maybe he should one of these days.

  Pulling out his cellphone, he called Tembelos and told him to come and pick him up, then opened the door of the municipality building and walked out into the street to wait. Overhead, the stars were bright. He studied the night sky, dwarfed as always by its immensity, and picked out Orion and Pleiades. He wondered what his place was in the cosmos, the purpose of his time here on earth. Initially, like most Greeks, he’d thought it would be family—that he’d spend his days providing for a wife and children—but that was not to be.

  Truth was, like Lydia Pappas, he had wanted children desperately. After his father died, it had been lonely in his mother’s house. He’d yearned for sisters and brothers, for someone to play with. He’d married Dimitra partially for that reason, to have a companion and not be alone. And he’d always thought one day he’d have a house full of children, grow deaf from the sound of their laughter.

  He shook his fist at the sky, cursed God for Sami, cursed God for all of it.

  Tembelos arrived in the Rav a few minutes later and screeched to a halt in front of him. “Hey, boss, you ready?”

  Patronas was dismayed to see the priest in the car, slumped over in the backseat, his head lolling on his chest. The old man was snoring peacefully, his beard rising and falling, wafting with each breath as if borne by a gentle breeze. His robe was in disarray and he looked more than a little drunk.

  “What the hell is he doing here?”

  “Had no choice,” Tembelos said. “Old fellow consumed enough food to feed a small city and fell asleep in the car. I don’t know if ‘sleeping it off’ applies to eating, but that’s what he’s doing.”