The Lost Throne

by Chris Kuzneski

  Payne spoke over the sound of gushing water. “Obviously, you’re the expert here. If you say Russia is closed, then Russia is closed. Who am I to doubt you?”

  Jarkko continued to work as he considered Payne’s words. Finally, he turned off the hose. “That is all? No bribes? No threats? No promises to Jarkko?”

  Payne shook his head. “Of course not. I wouldn’t want to insult you.”

  “But you did insult me. You lied to Jarkko, and Jarkko did not like. I am man of principle. A simple man. A fisherman. I work hard every day. I have no time for lies. Or men who tell them.”

  “Really? So you expect me to believe that Russia is closed?”

  “No! Russia is not closed. Do not be a molopää! How you close a country? Jarkko was lying to teach you lesson. You no lie to Jarkko, then Jarkko no lie to you!”

  “Fine,” Payne said. “No more lies.”

  “Good! Start with name. Not name on fake passport. Real name. It is my secret.”

  Payne realized he didn’t have much of a choice. If he wanted a ride to Saint Petersburg, he had to get on Jarkko’s good side. “My name is Jon. That’s D.J.”

  Jarkko studied Payne’s eyes. “Yes, I believe you. Our trip is not canceled.”

  “Glad to hear it. We can’t wait to leave.”

  “Soon,” Jarkko said as he peeled off his gloves. He laid them on the countertop and pulled out a large thermos from behind it. “First, we toast my new friends, Jon and D.J.”

  Jones approached, no longer worried about being slimed. “What are we drinking?”

  “It is drink I invent. I call it Kafka. I name it after famous writer.”

  Jones grimaced, unsure why a Finnish fisherman would name a drink after Franz Kafka, a German-speaking author. “Are you a fan of his stories?”

  Jarkko ignored the question, pouring the beverage into the top of his thermos. “Drink!”

  Jones eyed the cup suspiciously, then took a small sip. He immediately scrunched his face in disgust. “Good Lord! My tongue went numb. What the hell is that stuff ?”

  “I already tell you. It is Kafka.”

  “But what’s in it?”

  “You want recipe? It is coffee made with vodka. Cof-ka. Kafka!”

  “No water?”

  “Water? Why use water? I fish in water. I clean with water. I no drink water.” Jarkko pointed toward Payne. “Give cup to Jon. He must drink before we go.”

  “With pleasure,” Jones said as he handed the cup to Payne. “Bottoms up!”

  Not wanting to insult his host, Payne took a sip of the potent cocktail. It was more disgusting than he could have imagined. It was like drinking bile. Grimacing, he handed the cup back to the Finn. “Now that we’re done with that, it’s your turn to tell me the truth.”

  “Okay. What you want to know?”

  “What’s a molopää?”

  Jarkko laughed as he gulped the rest of the Kafka. “It is Finnish word for penis head.”

  Jones grinned at the insult. “Wait a second. You called him a penis head?”

  “Never! I never insult my new friend. I say don’t be a molopää.”

  “Actually, that’s good advice,” cracked Jones. “I tell him that all the time.”

  Jarkko laughed even louder. “I like you, D.J.! Come, give Jarkko hug!”

  Before Jones could jump out of the way, he found himself wrapped in a massive bear hug. He tried not to breathe while his face was buried in Jarkko’s bloody apron, but the Finn’s grip was so tight that Jones wasn’t able to push himself away before he was forced to inhale. In a flash, he knew what it smelled like inside the belly of a whale.

  Jarkko released Jones, then said, “Okay. Now we go to boat and visit Russia!”

  28

  The Greek police were ecstatic about the recovery of the monks’ heads and the discovery of the secret tunnel at Holy Trinity. Dial realized it wouldn’t benefit his career in any way, so he told everyone at the crime scene that Marcus Andropoulos had found it by himself. It was Dial’s way of rewarding the young cop for his hard work during the past few days. It also freed him from the onslaught of questions that were sure to follow, time he could use on the investigation.

  Before breaking the news, he photographed everything he could with a digital camera that he had borrowed from Andropoulos. The carved door. The stone walls. The wooden shelves. The stacked heads. The elaborate altar. And anything else that looked the least bit important. Experience had taught him the most significant clues often appeared in the smallest of details, so he took no chances. By the time he was done, he had taken more than a hundred photographs. Once Dial uploaded them to the Interpol server, Henri Toulon or anyone else with the proper clearance could examine them on their global network.

  Awake since the crack of dawn, Dial knew he needed to catch his second wind. A nap was a possibility. So was a cup of coffee. But before he did anything else, he wanted to wash the stench of death off his skin. Borrowing the car from Andropoulos, he drove to his hotel in Kalampáka, where he was tempted to use the heated pool at the Divani Metéora. Unfortunately, he hadn’t packed his swimming trunks, so he opted for a shower instead. A long, soothing shower.

  It relaxed his muscles and allowed him to think.

  In Dial’s mind, the next twenty-four hours would be critical to his investigation—especially if Theodore lived up to his word and researched the history of Holy Trinity. If the monk found any information about the tunnel or the military artwork, Dial would finally have the historical context that he needed to extend his investigation. Without it, he knew he would keep spinning his wheels, unable to connect the secret of the passageway to the motive for the massacre.

  As luck would have it, Great Metéoron was closed to the general public on Tuesdays, which meant Theodore could concentrate on his research for the next thirty-six hours without being disturbed by visitors. Except, of course, for Dial and Andropoulos, who would be stopping by on Tuesday morning for a private tour. Dial wanted to see the bone room and the manuscript library for himself, just in case there were some ancient clues or symbols that everyone was overlooking. He also wanted to interview some of the other monks about the murders, although he had been forewarned by Andropoulos that it would be an act of futility.

  Most of the monks lived in silence, unwilling to mingle with the outside world.

  At the very least, Dial figured his observations would give him a better understanding of the monastic way of life. He thought he had accomplished that goal the night before when he had the long conversation with Nicolas. Now he wasn’t even sure if Nicolas was a monk. He looked like a monk and acted like a monk—except for his nasty habit of lying. Other than that, Dial would have bet big money that Nicolas was a monk somewhere.

  The only question was, where?

  While uploading the crime-scene photos through an Internet connection in his hotel room, Dial got dressed in a nice shirt and slacks. He was scheduled to meet Andropoulos in town for an authentic Greek dinner. Whatever that meant. Dial had been to Athens on several occasions but had never visited central Greece. Based on the flocks of sheep he’d seen from his balcony, he was confident that lamb would be on the menu. In fact, he might have passed his entrée on his drive down the mountainside.

  It was something he tried not to think about as he left his room.

  A few minutes later, while Dial was walking toward the car, his cell phone started to vibrate. He checked the number on his screen. It was Henri Toulon.

  Dial answered in French. “Bonjour, Henri.”

  Toulon paused before speaking. “Who is this?”

  “It’s Nick. Who do you think it is?”

  “Oh,” Toulon teased, “I did not know you spoke French. Please, do it no more. Your accent is crude. You sound like a tourist.”

  Dial grumbled. “You know, I was having a good hour until you called. Now it’s ruined. I’m tempted to hang up on you, but you’d just use that as an excuse to stop working.”

  “Nic
k, I am always working. Just, sometimes, I am working on not working.”

  Dial smiled at the remark. Despite their bickering, they actually did get along.

  “So, Henri, what’s on your mind?”

  “I promised you I would look at your Spartan photos again, after I had my coffee. Well, you know me, I really like coffee, so I am just calling now.”

  “And?”

  “I have nothing to add. I did a great job this morning.”

  “Wonderful,” Dial said sarcastically. “Thanks for the update. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  “Wait! Don’t hang up. I’m not finished.”

  “Go on, I’m listening.”

  “Next, I pondered what you said to me. You asked if these killers could be Spartans. I laughed at you and told you no because Sparta is no more. But the more you argued, the less sure I became. They sounded like real Spartans to me. So I called Spárti—”

  “Spárti? What’s Spárti?”

  “It is city built on top of ancient Sparta. It is in the Peloponnese of southern Greece.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “It is small, maybe twenty thousand people. It is located near the Eurotas River in Laconia.”

  “If you say so. Currently I’m in a parking lot, nowhere near a map.”

  “Well, trust me, Spárti is real. And the man I spoke with was quite helpful.”

  “What man?”

  “An NCB agent by the name of George Pappas. He has lived there for many years.”

  “And?”

  “You will not believe me, but he swore to me that Spartan soldiers still exist.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Toulon laughed. “See, I knew you wouldn’t believe me. You never believe me.”

  Dial ignored him. “Give me details.”

  “First, you must understand the geography. The Peloponnese is a large peninsula separated from the rest of Greece by the Gulf of Corinth. If not for a narrow land bridge in the northeast corner, it would actually be an island, not a peninsula. Spárti sits at the bottom on the southern end of the Laconian plain. It is guarded by mountains on three sides, isolated from the rest of Greece by distance and geology. Ancient Sparta was settled there for that very reason. These were men of war. They built their city in a location that would be difficult to attack.”

  “Got it,” Dial said. “I can picture it in my head. It’s south of the city of Olympia, about halfway to the island of Crete.”

  “Good job, Nick! Someone did his homework on his flight to Athens.”

  “They didn’t make me chief for nothing.”

  “Well, we can talk about that some other time. For now, let’s stick to my point: Spárti is very isolated. And since it is, it is very different from mainland Greece.”

  “In what way?”

  “For one, some of the people—particularly those who live in the mountain villages—don’t speak Greek. They speak Tsakonian.”

  “Tsakonian? I’ve never heard of it.”

  “Let me make it simpler. They speak the language of Sparta.”

  “Hold up! People still speak Spartan?”

  “More or less. It comes from the language of Ancient Sparta, though it’s been updated through the years. Some experts classify Tsakonian as a dialect, but that’s incorrect. It is a separate Hellenic language, different from the branch of Ancient Athens, which eventually became Modern Greek. Tsakonian is Doric Greek, not Attic Greek. So it is different.”

  Dial grimaced at the information. “Speaking of foreign languages, I didn’t understand half the shit you just said. But that’s okay. I’m kind of used to it. You speak English like a tourist.”

  “That was funny, Nick. Perhaps I will tell you the rest of this en français.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t understand that, either. We must have a bad connection.”

  “Oui. Let us blame your ignorance on your cell phone.”

  “And we’ll blame your English on your drinking.”

  Toulon smiled. “Touché.”

  “Anyway,” Dial said, trying to get the conversation back on track, “didn’t you say something about Spartan soldiers?”

  “Oui. I was just getting there.” Toulon opened his desk drawer and grabbed his pack of cigarettes. “Some of these mountain towns, they are filled with people from a different era. They have no television. They have no electricity. They don’t even speak Greek. All they have is one another and the culture they have always known. The culture of Sparta.”

  “Continue.”

  “This morning, I told you about their ancestors. Spartan boys were bred for war. They lived for it. They died for it. It’s all they cared about. It was passed from fathers to sons for generations until it was so much a part of them that they could do nothing else. Some men are born farmers. Some men are born poets. And some men are born warriors. These are those men.”

  Toulon pulled out a cigarette and held it under his nose like a glass of fine wine. “You have these men in America, no? They live in Montana with their kids and their dogs and they follow their own rules. What is it you call them?”

  “Militia.”

  “Oui! Like the Unabomber, Ted Kuzneski.”

  “Kaczynski.”

  “Whatever! You know the men I mean. Every country has them. Some are called rebels. Some are called guerrillas. Some are freedom fighters. But they are one and the same. They choose a cause and fight for it because that is who they are.”

  Dial was quite familiar with militant types and the damage they could do. He had been assigned to the southwestern U.S. in 1993 when a religious sect called the Branch Davidians, led by David Koresh, had faced off against the ATF and the FBI, 9 miles outside of Waco, Texas. The resulting fifty-one-day siege ended with the death of eighty-two church members, including twenty-one children.

  Exactly two years later, to the day, Timothy McVeigh parked a Ryder truck, filled with 5,000 pounds of explosives, outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City and lit the fuse. The resulting blast killed 168 people and injured over 800 more. At the time, it was the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil—since surpassed by 9/11.

  And in all these cases, Dial had been called in to help with the official investigation.

  “So,” Dial asked, “the hills around Spárti are filled with these men?”

  “Oui, but they are different from militia.”

  “In what way?”

  “They use no guns. They use no bombs. They fight with their hands and their blades.”

  “Just like their ancestors.”

  “Just like the Spartans.”

  Dial considered this while staring at the natural rock pillars that loomed behind the hotel. They stood at attention like ancient soldiers whose sole job was to guard the monasteries from any force that meant them harm. Over the centuries, they had performed their duty admirably during times that were far more turbulent than these: times of war and revolution in Greece.

  That’s why none of this made any sense.

  What had brought on the sudden violence? And what did it have to do with Spartans? If, in fact, that’s who the killers were. What connection could they possibly have with a bunch of monks who lived several hundred miles away from Spárti?

  “Let me ask you a question,” Dial said, racking his brain for potential links between the two groups. “Were the Spartans religious people?”

  Toulon shrugged. “That is a tough question. I do not know.”

  “Really?” Dial teased. “I thought you were an expert on Ancient Greece.”

  “I am. But no one knows the answer to your question. As I’ve mentioned, the Spartans did not support the arts. This included the art of writing. According to Spartan law, historical records were not kept. Literature was not created. And laws were memorized, not recorded. That means everything we know about the Spartans comes from outside sources, written by men who never fully grasped the culture that they described.”

  “Then how do we k
now they were great warriors?”

  “Because everyone, even their most hated rivals, praised their skill as soldiers. That is the one thing that all of Greece agreed upon. Do not mess with the Spartans.”

  “But all the other stuff—religion, politics, and so on—is just a guess by historians?”

  “Oui. Just a wild guess. No one knows for sure.”

  Dial nodded. “Which ultimately worked to the Spartans’ advantage.”

  “In what way?”

  “People fear what they don’t understand.”

  “This is true.” Toulon lit his cigarette and blew a large puff of smoke into the air. He enjoyed the flavor and his civil disobedience. “That is why I fear nothing.”

  Dial smiled at the comment as he pondered all the information he had been told. Unlike Toulon, who pretended to know everything, there were still several things that Dial didn’t understand about the case. “Do me a favor. Get ahold of that NCB agent from Spárti.”

  “George Pappas.”

  “Right. Get ahold of George and ask him to snoop around those mountain towns near Spárti. Who knows? Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  29

  TUESDAY, MAY 20

  Gulf of Finland

  The 235-mile boat trip from Helsinki to Saint Petersburg was uneventful, just as Payne, Jones, and Jarkko had hoped. The Gulf of Finland was calm. The weather was unseasonably warm. And because of the northern latitude, the sun didn’t set until nearly 11 P.M. This allowed them to blend in with all the other fishermen who were taking advantage of the extra daylight. In Russia, the phenomenon is called Belye Nochi, or White Nights. During the summer months, the sun doesn’t drop low enough behind the horizon for the sky to grow completely dark. At times, day and night are often indistinguishable. In fact, it is so pronounced in late June and early July that the city of Saint Petersburg saved money by not turning on its streetlights.

  Thankfully, the effect isn’t quite as severe in May because Payne and Jones preferred darkness for border crossings. Fewer witnesses. Fewer guards. More freedom to improvise.