Jones shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
Payne shined his light on Jones. There was a gleam in his eye that hadn’t been there a moment before—and it wasn’t a reflection of the flashlight. “You bastard! I can tell from your face that you know where it is.”
Jones laughed. “I’m not positive, but I do have a theory. Ironically, if I’m right about it, I just gave you a clue.”
“You gave us a clue?”
He grinned. “If you had been paying attention, you would’ve noticed it.”
“You gave me a clue?”
Dial, who had been listening from the rear of the cave, spoke up. “He said dead.”
Payne turned and looked at him. “Dead?”
Dial nodded. “He said dead giveaway. He’s talking about the skulls.”
Jones whistled, impressed. “Score one for Nick Dial! How did you figure that out?”
“It wasn’t anything that you said,” Dial assured him. “It was something that Nicolas said before he died. He claimed the Brotherhood brought the skulls up here to honor them. But that goes against everything that Marcus and I learned at Metéora. The monks don’t keep skulls to honor them. They keep the skulls to remind them how fragile life is.”
He glanced down at Nicolas, who was lying on the ground underneath the blood-soaked blanket. “One minute you’re here, and the next you’re gone.”
“Okay,” Payne said. “I get that. But what does that have to do with the treasure?”
Dial continued. “Nicolas didn’t come up here to die. He came here to protect the treasure. And the only way he could do that was by convincing us that the Brotherhood had moved it somewhere else. Then he killed himself before we could ask him any more questions.”
“You seem pretty sure of that.”
Dial shrugged. “He’s lied to me before. I started to recognize his patterns.”
Allison asked, “So what does that mean? They didn’t move the treasure?”
Dial shook his head. “They didn’t have time. The Spartans killed them before they could.”
75
Payne studied the large pile of skulls stacked haphazardly against the wall. There were hundreds of them, several centuries’ worth of dead monks who had sworn to guard an ancient treasure. If his friends were correct, the monks still protected it—even in death.
“Explain this to me again,” he said to Jones. “You think the treasure is under there?”
“Not the treasure itself. But I think the skulls are hiding something. A fissure or a passageway.”
Payne smirked at his friend. “A minute ago you were making fun of me when I said there might be a clue somewhere in the cave. Now you’re telling me there’s a secret passageway?”
Jones nodded his head. “Yep. That’s what I’m saying.”
“That sounds kind of crazy.”
Andropoulos cleared his throat. “Actually, sir, it’s not that crazy. Director Dial and I found a secret tunnel at Metéora. It was hidden behind a large tapestry in the monks’ barracks.”
Payne glanced at him. “You found a tunnel? What was inside?”
“Stairs and an underground vault with several carved shelves and a fancy stone altar, but whatever had been stored in there had been moved long ago.”
“The room was empty?”
“Yes, sir. It was empty.”
Dial corrected him. “Actually, that’s inaccurate. We did find something important.”
Payne asked, “What was that?”
“The severed heads of the Brotherhood.”
“Are you serious? The heads were down there?”
Dial nodded as pieces of the puzzle slowly fell into place. “The Spartans slaughtered the monks, and then stacked their heads on the stone altar. At the time, we assumed that they were sending a message, but we didn’t know what it was. Now I have my answer.”
“Which is?” Payne wondered.
“One of the monks—one of the seven members of the Brotherhood—must’ve revealed the treasure’s location before his death. The stacked heads were the Spartans’ way of bragging about it.”
Jones added, “Which would explain their presence on the mountain. They knew where the treasure was hidden, and they were coming to get it.”
“It appears that way, yes.”
Payne glanced at Dial. “It appears that way? Do you have another theory?”
Andropoulos said, “He always has a theory.”
Dial smiled. The young cop was learning. “For some reason, something about the Spartans’ role in this still doesn’t seem to fit. From what I have been told, the Spartans weren’t motivated by money. Their sole purpose in life was to be the best warriors they could be. They didn’t care about gold or treasure. They only cared about their reputations as soldiers.”
Payne shrugged. “Times change. People change. Money might mean more to them now.”
“I don’t know about that,” Dial argued. “They still live in the same region of Greece and continue to speak Laconian after all these years. They still train like their ancestors, and obviously have the same armor and weapons. On the surface, it appears they still care about the same basic things. And as far as I know, money isn’t one of them.”
“Then why were they here?”
“When Marcus and I spotted the tunnel, we found these incredibly detailed carvings of soldiers and war. They appeared on the door, on the shelves, and on the stone altar. To us, they seemed completely out of place in a monastery where all the other artwork focused on religion. Now I’m beginning to wonder if the carvings had something to do with the treasure.”
“Such as?”
Dial explained his theory. “We were informed that the monasteries have always been used as sanctuaries, a place where artists and writers were free to work without persecution. We were also told that Spartans frowned upon the written word. Actually, that’s an understatement. Writing was forbidden inside their culture. Everything we know about them comes from outside sources, and since we’re talking about twenty-five hundred years ago, sources are limited.”
He paused to catch his breath. “So, and this is just a wild guess here, what if there’s more to this treasure than gold? What if there are ancient books or artwork that would cast the Spartans in a negative light? What if their reason for coming here wasn’t to get rich? What if they came here to protect their heritage?”
Jones laughed and patted Dial on the back. “A wild guess? That doesn’t sound like a wild guess to me. It sounds like a highly detailed hypothesis. I was half-expecting you to pull out graphs and charts.”
Dial shrugged. “What can I say? I had a lot of time to think when we were climbing the mountain.”
“Well,” Jones said as he rubbed his hands together, “there’s only one way to see if your theory is correct. Let’s find us a treasure.”
While Andropoulos guarded the entrance to the cave, the other four worked as a team. Payne and Jones handed the skulls to Dial and Allison, who moved them carefully to the other side of the cave. Slowly but surely the first pile dwindled as the new pile started to rise.
Despite the seemingly gruesome nature of their task, none of them were fazed by the undertaking. In fact, the large number of skulls actually depersonalized the situation for them. In their minds, they weren’t picking up skulls. They were simply clearing loose impediments from a hidden tunnel.
At least they hoped they were.
They wouldn’t know for sure for another few minutes.
In the end, it was Jones who spotted the first harbinger. As he pulled a skull away from the wall, he noticed a small fissure. “Allison, hand me a light.”
Their flashlights sat on the floor, each of them shining on the ceiling above so they could work with both hands. She picked up the closest one and handed it to him.
“Do you see something?”
“I don’t know yet.”
He shined the light into the crack, which started a few feet above the ground. Because of his angle and the remaini
ng skulls that blocked his view, he couldn’t see much. But the gap definitely extended into the wall. “There’s a hole back here.”
Standing next to the pile, Payne wiped his forehead with his sleeve. “How big is it?”
“I can’t tell yet.”
“Then put down the light and get back to work.”
Jones gave him a mock salute. “Yes, sir.”
They laughed in the gloom of the cave as they continued digging.
With each passing minute, with each skull that was carried away, their level of excitement grew. And so did the small hole. First it was a fissure. Then it became a crawl space. Before long they realized it was something more significant. It was the beginning of a stone ramp that went deep inside the core of the mountain.
The monks’ construction was ingenious. Instead of cutting an arch or doorway in the side of the cave, which would have been difficult to conceal in a natural setting, they had cut through the base of the wall and dug a trench through the cave’s floor. They’d used dirt and small rocks to pack the empty space below and then covered everything with skulls.
In the culture of Mount Athos, it was a wonderful deterrent.
Any hermit who stumbled upon the cave would have been reluctant to take residence in the final resting place of so many monks. And they certainly wouldn’t have moved the skulls or stolen them as souvenirs. That would have been the ultimate sign of disrespect. So the skulls did much more than conceal the tunnel: they actually kept interlopers away.
Until now.
76
The digging would have been finished sooner if they’d had shovels and wheelbarrows to assist them. As it was, they were forced to dig with their hands. They used Nicolas’s blood-soaked blanket to haul away dirt and debris.
Payne, who was covered in grime, shined his flashlight into the hole and made the announcement that they had been waiting for. “I think it’s big enough now.”
“Can you get through?” asked Jones, who was even dirtier than Payne.
He leaned in closer. “Yeah, I think so.”
“Then it’s definitely big enough. I could’ve slipped through an hour ago.”
Payne smiled. “Your body could’ve, but your ego couldn’t.”
“Trust me, my ego isn’t my biggest feature.”
Payne rolled his eyes. “If you’re done lying to us, are you ready to go inside?”
“Of course I’m ready. I’ve been ready. Who goes first?”
Payne gestured toward the hole. “After you, my friend.”
Jones patted him on the shoulder. “Thanks, Jon. I appreciate that.”
“No problem,” he replied. “Scream if you feel any booby traps.”
Jones laughed as he got on his hands and knees and squirmed through the gap. Allison went next, then Dial, and finally Payne. Andropoulos stayed on guard duty, protecting the mouth of the cave—just in case more Spartans happened to wander by.
After crawling on a downward slant for nearly five feet, Jones had enough room to pull his legs underneath him. Sitting in a crouch, he reached his hand back and helped Allison through the gap before he continued onward. With every step he took, the passageway became higher until he was finally able to stand upright.
Shining his light on the passageway, he realized it had been carved into solid rock. “Will you look at this tunnel? They did all of this by hand.”
“It’s amazing,” she replied as she ran her fingers over the gray stone.
Waiting for the others to arrive, Jones pointed his light forward. A wall of darkness lingered beyond the reach of his beam. The temperature was in the low fifties, even cooler than the cave above, which had been warmed by their body heat. He put his nose into the air and took a deep whiff, worried about the presence of noxious gases. But he detected nothing.
“We’re clear,” Payne said from the back.
Jones nodded and started off again down the passageway. The ground was uneven and made of solid stone. The walls were wide, approximately ten feet across. He swept his beam from side to side, searching for anything that seemed out of place. Though Payne had been joking about booby traps, Jones realized there had been a grain of truth in what he said.
As a child, Jones had read stories about real-life archaeologists who had been undone by spring snares attached to trees or Burmese tiger pits lined with sharp spears. In the Special Forces, he had learned how to build both—and several other devices to trap or kill the enemy—so he knew such things existed.
He just didn’t know if they existed down here.
“Clear,” Jones called over his shoulder.
“Still clear,” Payne replied.
A few seconds later, the passageway turned sharply to the left. Jones peeked around the corner, not willing to commit his team until he knew what was waiting for them. What he saw boggled his imagination. The tunnel stopped and a natural cave began. Soaring to a height of over fifty feet, the massive cavern stretched beyond the scope of his light.
He stepped forward for a better view, and when he did, his eyes were drawn to the objects on the floor in front of him. Everywhere he looked, for as far as he could see, there were wooden crates. Some as small as backpacks, others much larger than caskets. Hundreds of ancient boxes stacked in neat rows, just sitting in the darkness waiting to be opened.
“Holy shit,” he mumbled under his breath. “I’m fucking rich.”
Allison heard the comment and hurried up to him to see what he was talking about. She pointed her flashlight in the same direction and was staggered by the sight.
“Oh my God!” she gasped.
Jones grinned at her reaction. “Do you like my treasure? I saw it first.”
Dial was an expert on body language. From his position in the passageway, he knew his friends had discovered something momentous. The look of sheer joy on both their faces was proof of that. Still, it didn’t prepare him for his first glimpse of the cavern and its bounty.
He rounded the corner and stood there in shock, his massive jaw dropping to his chest.
“Good Lord!” Dial blurted. “I think I have to quit my job.”
Payne was the last one to see the treasure. Taller than the other three, he stood behind them and marveled at the enormity of it all: the cavern, the number of crates, and the effort it must have taken to haul this stuff from Constantinople, which was hundreds of miles away.
“There’s no way the monks carried this stuff by themselves,” he said to no one in particular. “How in the world did they keep this place a secret for so long?”
“I have no freaking idea,” Jones said. “No idea at all. Then again, that’s not what concerns me right now.”
“What does?”
“How are we going to carry this stuff down the mountain?”
The question lingered in the darkness as they rushed forward to open some crates. But Dial decided not to join them. Instead, he turned around and crawled back through the hole.
For the time being, he was still a law enforcement official, and he was still working on a case. Once the smoke cleared and he got back to France, he might have to reconsider his future.
As a director at Interpol, he made a good salary and had a great pension plan, but it paled in comparison with the riches they had found in the cavern. If Payne and Jones figured out a legal way for him to keep a share, he would be tempted to walk away from his career.
But until that day, he had other things to worry about.
Like what was happening on the mountain below.
Coming out,” Dial called to Andropoulos, who was still guarding the mouth of the cave. The last thing he wanted was to surprise the kid and get shot by mistake. “Any trouble out here?”
“No, sir. No trouble at all. How about you?”
“Things are good down below.”
“So,” he asked excitedly, “did they find any treasure?”
Dial smiled at him. “Why don’t you go and look for yourself ?”
“Thank you, sir. I was
hoping you’d say that.”
Andropoulos turned to walk away.
“Hold up,” Dial ordered. “Before you go, there’s one other thing I forgot to mention.”
“What’s that, sir?”
“Just so you know, it’s been a pleasure working with you.”
Andropoulos beamed with pride. “I was hoping you’d say that, too.”
With a smile on his face, he ran off to see the treasure.
Dial reached behind him and pulled out the radio they had taken from Petros. During their climb up the mountain, Dial had turned it off, afraid the noise might give away their position. But now that they had safely reached their destination, he felt he needed to update the other guards and let them know they were all right.
Several seconds passed before someone responded.
Without mentioning anything about the treasure, Dial filled them in on some basics. “Sorry I’ve been radio-silent for so long. Every time we turned around, we were under attack.”
“Are you all right?”
Dial paused, thinking about Nicolas. Somehow his death needed to be explained without revealing what had really happened. Dial didn’t want to lie. Yet at the same time, he knew he didn’t want to tell the full truth. “We’re fine. We found a monk, though. He didn’t make it.”
The guard said, “We had some losses, too. But we took some Spartans with us. Right now, we’re still searching the grounds, looking for more of them.”
“What about harbor patrol? Did they figure out how the Spartans got here?”
“Yes, sir. They found a boat anchored on the southern shore.”
“Anyone aboard?”
“No, sir. It was empty. But the boat had a name.” The guard paused as he searched for the information. “It was called the Odyssey. It’s a yacht registered in California.”
“California? The Spartans used a boat from California? Did they steal it?”
“I don’t know, sir. We’re still trying to reach the boat’s owner.”
Dial grimaced. “Wait. You know the owner’s name? Is he Greek?”
“I don’t think so, sir. His name is Richard Byrd.”
The Lost Throne Page 39
