The Lost Throne

by Chris Kuzneski

  At the last possible second, Leon dived to the ground, using his shield to help him spring back to his feet behind the older boy. Then, while his opponent whirled back around, Leon cocked his sword and thrust it forward with every ounce of strength he had. The sound of wood meeting skull was unlike any sound he had ever heard before. There was a loud crack, followed by an echo that he didn’t think was possible from the human head. A heartbeat later, the teenager dropped to both of his knees with a solid thump yet somehow remained upright. He swayed back and forth as though he was going to fall, as if a single gust of wind would knock him over.

  And Leon just stood there, sword in hand, watching his opponent teeter.

  It was an act of weakness that could not be tolerated.

  Leon’s enraged father pushed his way through the ring of kids. With a mighty wallop, he smacked his son across the face. The boy fell to the ground, spitting blood. He remained there for several seconds, which was a few seconds too long in the eyes of his father. Bubbling with rage, he grabbed Leon by the neck and yanked him to his feet. Then he shoved Leon toward the large teenager, who was still reeling from the earlier blow.

  His father screamed, “There is no mercy on the battlefield. Finish him now!”

  Leon nodded, picked up his sword, and did what Spartans were expected to do.

  He finished the job without mercy.

  33

  After breakfast they moved to the living room, where they would be more comfortable. Each of them sat in the same spot as the night before. Payne and Jones were on the couch, and Allison was on a chair. Once again, she held a pillow in her lap.

  Payne said, “In my experience, it’s much easier to solve a problem when you’re emotionally detached from the situation. It allows you to consider options that would otherwise be difficult. Part of our training as soldiers was to acquire that skill. We learned how to compartmentalize our emotions in the harshest of environments. We learned how to analyze data calmly despite the threat of death. Without that ability, we wouldn’t have been able to function.”

  “Makes sense,” said Allison, as she tucked her feet underneath her.

  “As you mentioned, you’ve spent the past two days racking your brain, trying to figure out why Richard was killed, yet you haven’t made any progress. If I had to guess, I’d say that has more to do with your emotional state than your knowledge of the situation.”

  “Maybe,” she conceded. “I’ve been a little preoccupied.”

  Payne leaned forward and smiled, hoping to connect with Allison. “If it’s okay with you, I’d like to ask you some questions about your time in Russia. We’ll try to sort through all your answers and come up with a logical explanation for Richard’s death.”

  Allison nodded. She wanted to solve the mystery as quickly as possible.

  Payne began. “You mentioned that Richard was fascinated with Ancient Greece. What does that have to do with Saint Petersburg?”

  “How much do you know about archaeology?”

  “I know a little,” Payne said, thinking back to their recent missions in Italy and Saudi Arabia. “But not as much as D.J. He’s something of a history buff.”

  “No, I’m not,” Jones argued. “I’m just naturally smart. I remember things that dumb people forget. . . . Remember, Jon?”

  Payne smirked but didn’t dignify the insult with one of his own.

  Allison glanced at Jones. “What do you know about Heinrich Schliemann?”

  Jones smiled at the mere mention of his name. “That guy was a character and a half.”

  She laughed at his remark like it was an inside joke—which, in this case, it was. Because Payne had no idea who Schliemann was or what he had to do with anything.

  “Time-out,” said Payne as he signaled for one. “Who is Heinrich Schliemann?”

  Jones answered. “He was a German businessman who hated his day job and decided he would much rather be a famous archaeologist. The guy had no formal training, but he took all his money and went searching for Greek treasures. Amazingly, he hit the jackpot on more than one occasion, finding the lost cities of Troy and Mycenae and a number of other sites.”

  “And?” Payne asked.

  Allison jumped in. “Rivals hated him for it. Since he lacked formal training, he didn’t know how to preserve a site or catalogue the artifacts. He was more interested in finding treasure and being famous than anything else. For every piece of gold he discovered, he ruined ten pieces of historical evidence that would have helped scholars understand these ancient cities. Newspapers praised him for his frequent discoveries. The public adored him for his golden treasures. But historians hated him, because they knew what he was destroying.”

  “Not only that,” Jones added, “he lied more often than a politician. People never knew what was real and what was bullshit.”

  “True,” Allison admitted. “But that was part of his charm. He lied about his methods. He lied about his treasures. He even lied in his own diary. He used to glue rewritten pages in his journals to change the facts of his life, so he would seem more important after he died. He talked about dining with presidents and surviving famous disasters, and none of it really happened. After a while, he started to believe his own stories, which made it even funnier. No one knew what he would do or say next. But people were captivated by his adventures.”

  Jones laughed. “Like I said, he was a character and a half.”

  “That’s one of the reasons I chose Schliemann as the focus of my thesis. I thought the modern world should learn more about him.”

  “I’d love to read it when you’re done. That guy was a classic.”

  She smiled at Jones. “I refer to him as the P. T. Barnum of archaeology. In my opinion, he brought fun and entertainment to a field that used to be bone-dry. Pardon the pun.”

  “Not a bad comparison,” Jones admitted. “They lived about the same time, right?”

  “They actually died four months apart. Schliemann in 1890. Barnum in 1891.”

  Payne listened to the conversation, trying to sort through all the details. Some facts were relevant; others were not. But he would allow them to keep rambling on the topic. Not only to get as much background information as possible—since it was obvious that Schliemann factored into the equation in some way. He also wanted to get a better sense of Allison’s personality. What made her tick? What was her role in this? Could she be trusted in a tough situation?

  All those questions needed to be answered.

  Then again, so did the question that got everything started.

  “And,” Payne repeated, “what does this have to do with Saint Petersburg?”

  Allison’s cheeks turned pink. “Sorry. I tend to get excited when I talk about Schliemann. I’ve been researching him for the past few years. Right now, he’s a major part of my life.”

  “That’s quite all right. Now I feel like I know him, too.”

  She smiled at the sentiment. “Schliemann was born in Germany. At the age of twenty-four he moved here to work for an import/export firm. He was very good at his job, and before long he was making a nice living. Four years later, he learned his brother Ludwig had died in California, where he had been a speculator during the height of the Gold Rush. Considering Schliemann’s lust for gold, he took it as his cue to move to Sacramento to settle his brother’s affairs. Within a year, he had started his own bank that specialized in buying and selling gold dust. Before long, he had made millions and decided to move back to Saint Petersburg, which was a whole lot safer than the Wild West. Especially since he was accused of ripping off his business partner in California and taking advantage of his customers. They used to hang people for that.”

  Payne asked, “And that’s why you came here? To research Schliemann’s life?”

  “Yes and no,” she answered cryptically. “The first half of his life was important to my thesis because it revealed his character as a young man. He was someone who took big chances to accumulate his fortune, but when things got rough
, he ran for the hills. Meanwhile, Richard’s interest was completely different. He was fascinated with the second half of Schliemann’s life, the decades when he searched for treasures.”

  She looked at Jones. “Earlier, you mentioned that Schliemann discovered the lost city of Troy. Do you know how he found it?”

  Jones answered. “By reading the works of Homer.”

  She nodded, impressed. “That’s right. As late as the nineteenth century, people actually believed that Troy was a mythical city, much like the lost city of Atlantis. This belief was even shared by educated Greeks. When they read about the Trojan War in the Iliad and the Odyssey, they assumed Troy had been created by Homer and was nothing more than a fictional landscape to base his riveting tales. But Schliemann was different. He used the epic poems as a treasure map, following their lyrics like a book of instructions to find the ruins in modern-day Turkey.”

  She shook her head in amazement. “Think about it. The Iliad is the oldest surviving example of European literature. It was written in the ninth century B.C. and is considered a vital part of the Western canon. It has been studied by students all over the world for nearly three thousand years, yet Schliemann saw something that no else did. He saw an opportunity. Despite his lies, despite his flaws, despite his harshest critics, Schliemann was a visionary. A genius of epic proportions. At the time of his death, do you know how many languages he could speak? Twenty-two. Twenty-two languages.”

  Jones whistled. “Now, that’s impressive. That’s twenty-one more than Jon.”

  She smiled. “Do you know how Schliemann learned them? He used to memorize long passages of the same book, written in multiple languages. Then, if he couldn’t sleep at night, he used to shout the passages at the top of his lungs. No one knows why it worked, but it did. In the meantime, he was kicked out of multiple apartments because his neighbors hated him.”

  Jones laughed. “I can understand why.”

  Payne watched Allison as she spoke. The way her eyes danced with excitement. The way she used her hands to punctuate certain points. Her words were filled with such passion and enthusiasm, he barely had the heart to interrupt her. But he knew if he didn’t, she would keep talking about Schliemann, and they wouldn’t get any closer to solving Richard’s death.

  “And,” he said again, “what does this have to do with Saint Petersburg?”

  “Don’t worry, I’m getting there,” she said. “The treasure that Schliemann found on the site of Ancient Troy was nicknamed Priam’s Treasure. He named it after Priam, who was king of Troy in the story of the Iliad. This was a common theme with Schliemann. He named his treasures after characters in Homer even though he had no tangible evidence to support his claims.”

  “Part of his showmanship,” Payne guessed.

  “Exactly,” she said. “When he made this particular discovery, he and his wife, Sophia, wanted to keep Priam’s Treasure all to themselves. They lied to dozens of workers who were helping with their dig, telling them that it was Heinrich’s birthday. In honor of it, everyone was given a paid day off. An hour later, once everyone had left the site, Heinrich and Sophia wrapped the gold in her shawl and smuggled it out of the country.”

  Jones laughed at the tale. “That’s classic Schliemann. The guy was slippery.”

  “Remember, fortune was only a small part of the equation with Schliemann. He also wanted to be the world’s most famous antiquarian—that’s what’s archaeologists were called back then. So he photographed his wife wearing the fanciest items, which he dubbed the Jewels of Helen, and published her photograph next to a detailed description of his findings. He actually admitted in the media that he had smuggled everything out of the country. Well, let me tell you, it sparked a huge controversy. The Turkish government revoked his digging permits, they imprisoned some of his workers, and they sued him for their rightful share of the treasure. But Schliemann escaped to Greece before the Turks could arrest him.”

  “And what happened to the treasure?” Payne wondered.

  “The majority of it was acquired by the Imperial Museum of Berlin, which was Schliemann’s way of endearing himself to his native Germany. But during World War Two, it was looted from a hidden bunker located underneath the Berlin Zoo. For nearly fifty years, no one knew what happened to it. It was one of the greatest mysteries of the war. Then, one day in 1993, an exhibition opened at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, displaying Priam’s Treasure.”

  “It surfaced in Russia?” Payne asked. “How’d it get here?”

  “The Russian army’s Trophy Brigade, as they were called back then, had seized it and lied about it for decades. Eventually, leaders in Moscow decided the treasure was too beautiful to hide, and they put it on display for the whole world to see. Which, of course, started another controversy. Despite multiple threats by Germany, the Russians refused to give it back, claiming it was compensation for the destruction of Russian cities by the Nazis. Not to mention Nazi looting. If you know anything about World War Two, it wasn’t a good time to own art.”

  Payne and Jones nodded. They knew all about the spoils of war.

  “Which brings us to Saint Petersburg,” she said as she glanced at Payne. “Sorry it took so long to get here. I felt you needed to hear the whole story to understand.”

  “No problem. I learned a lot.”

  “Since Schliemann lived in Saint Petersburg for several years, the Russian government decided that half of the treasure should be exhibited in the city. Since 1998, it has been on public display at the Hermitage.”

  “And Richard wanted to study it?”

  She shook her head. “Richard didn’t care about the treasures that Schliemann had found. He was more concerned with the treasures that had eluded him.”

  34

  Payne considered all the information he had been told and tried to figure out why Richard Byrd had been killed. But it was dif ficult. There were still pieces missing from the equation.

  He knew Byrd was a treasure hunter who had an affinity for Heinrich Schliemann, an archaeologist who lived in Saint Petersburg during the nineteenth century. Allison was an expert on the subject, able to talk at length about every aspect of Schliemann’s life, including his passion for Greek treasures. What Payne didn’t know, though, was what role she served in Byrd’s latest project. Or, for that matter, what the project was.

  “When we spoke to Petr Ulster,” Payne said, hoping to shift the focus of the conversation back to Allison, “he mentioned Richard’s taste for young assistants. From what we were told, their talents were less than helpful in the Archives.”

  Allison agreed with the assessment. She was fully aware of Richard’s former employees and their sexual reputations. “Like I said, Richard was a player. He used his wealth and power to get what he wanted. And they, in return, traveled the globe.”

  “Yet you were willing to work for him. How did that happen?”

  “For two years I spent most of my free time in Stanford’s library, trying to learn everything I could about Heinrich Schliemann. The more I learned, the more I realized that my thesis was lacking an important element: firsthand experience. Unlike most archaeologists of his day, Schliemann didn’t live in a library. He lived in the field. He took his books and his shovels and started digging. How could I write a paper about him without experiencing the same things?”

  Payne said nothing, waiting for her to continue.

  “One day my thesis adviser told me that Richard was looking for a new assistant, preferably a doctoral student with an extensive knowledge of Greek treasures. Not only was it a paid position, but most of the fieldwork would be done in Europe. Obviously, it sounded perfect to me, so I submitted a letter of interest and my résumé. In the meantime, I researched Richard and discovered several interesting things. He came from old money. Ironically, it was made in the same manner as Schliemann’s—gold and banking. Later I found out their connection was even stronger than that. Richard’s ancestors had actually worked with Schliemann during the Gold Rush.
So Richard believed they were kindred spirits, destined to be linked forever.”

  Jones said, “That explains his boat.”

  She looked at him, confused. Not sure what he meant.

  “We saw a picture of his boat. It was called the Odyssey.”

  “Ah, yes. Richard’s yacht. A tribute to Homer and the journeys he hoped to make.”

  “Journeys that included you,” Payne said, trying to keep her focused.

  She nodded. “Richard called me a week later and asked me a number of questions about Schliemann and Greece. I must have passed his test, because he hired me sight unseen.”

  Payne smiled at the comment. It said a lot about her personality. She wanted them to know that she had been hired for her brains, not her looks. Then again, Payne had known that within five minutes of talking to her. “When was that?”

  “About a month ago.”

  “A month? You’ve been here for a month?”

  She shook her head. “Not at all. I’ve been here less than a week.”

  “But you worked with him for a month. What were your duties?”

  “At first, not much. He flew me to Berlin, where he spent most of his time at the local museums searching for information about Schliemann’s treasures. He talked to curators and experts in various fields. Meanwhile, I waited back at the hotel.”

  “Why was that?” Payne asked.

  “He didn’t trust me. In fact, he didn’t trust most people he met. In that way, he was just like Schliemann. He kept his plans to himself and only asked for help when he needed it.”

  “What type of help?”

  “He would summon me to his room, where I would be told to read a document or look at a picture. Then I would be asked for my opinion. Did I think this? Did I think that? It was very strange.”

  “In what way?”

  “It was always something different. One minute it was about Schliemann. The next about Zeus. Or the geology of Ancient Europe. There was never a consistent theme, like he was purposely trying to confuse me so I wouldn’t know what he was looking for.”