The Emperor Awakes

by Alexis Konnaris

As they stood mesmerised witnesses to the bizarre series of events, they noticed golden footprints on the floor that appeared to be made by someone moving away from them. There was a golden light enveloping them, and rushing with tremendous speed, following the footsteps with its wild tail flowing behind and grabbing Elli and the director like a lasso and pulling them forward.

  The fiery tail then released them and, briefly assuming the figure of a human, beckoned them over, urging them to move quickly. They obeyed hypnotised. The room kept expanding and becoming the museum itself. They were moving through the throngs of people admiring the magnificent artefacts, which they had no time to even catch a glimpse of. The people did not give them a second glance, as if they could not see them, as if nothing strange was happening, as if only Elli and the director could see that light.

  Suddenly they were climbing up the grand staircase, their faces reflected on the huge mirrors and smiling back at them like loyal long-lost friends. The footsteps and the light stopped and disappeared outside the room that used to be the Tsar’s private drawing room, now closed to the public.

  It was then that the room they were in, before their weird experience and whirlwind grand tour began, stopped expanding and retracted to its initial incarnation. Except for one thing. The table was no longer there, but there was a door in its place cut into the wall.

  The director was shaking his head in disbelief. He could not take much more of this kind of excitement at his age. He craved his usual routine, his boring days. A deathly silence descended.

  Elli tried the handle of the newly-appeared door, but it would not budge.

  ‘Mr Sumarov, is there another way into the Tsar’s drawing room?’

  It took Alexei Sumarov a few seconds to respond. He heard Elli’s voice as if coming from far away, through a head swimming in a haze, drowning in a stunned state.

  He managed to clear the fog in his mind and emerge to the surface of reality, eventually, with a twenty-second delay, which Elli considered breaking, but thought better of it and gave the director the opportunity to recover from what would have been a much bigger shock than for her. In her line of business she was used to strange events such as these.

  The director appeared to be his normal self again, apart from a face with a chalky-white pallor, when he eventually replied. ‘There should be a small door to the side leading into the Tsar’s bedroom that should now be locked.’ As soon as he said it the door to the Tsar’s bedroom appeared and they went in. Once inside the Tsar’s bedroom it did not take them long to find the small door leading to the Tsar’s drawing room. It was indeed locked and the director did not have a key.

  But when Elli gently tried the handle, not only did the door open, but it came off as if Elli had used great force to wrench it off its hinges. They entered the drawing room and stood there frozen to the spot.

  In front of them floated what looked like a transparent presence, a ghost, but too close to reality to be a ghost. At this point it was as if time had stopped.

  Elli stared at this apparition that looked so flesh and bone real. Its face contorted as if in anguish, then as if a wave of anger was rising and it was struggling to control it, she saw it becoming livid, its eyes spitting fire.

  Then its face began to change colours at the rate of two a second, its features drawn and redrawn, rearranged into a multitude of expressions of mirth, pity, anger, its brows furrowing and then frowning at the presence of the two people before it. For a few seconds it felt like a face-off between them, but with the first signs of exasperation, Elli started to reflect those emotions of the figure opposite her.

  But then as suddenly as it appeared the spectacle ceased and the figure’s inscrutability returned and remained intact and Elli’s face responded in the same way. The figure started to speak.

  ‘You have won this round. You have “out-expressioned” me. Come this way. Your companion’s memory has been erased. He will not remember anything that his eyes have witnessed. His imagination is another matter. It deceives and inspires. The footprint of its memory cannot be erased. But he can do no harm. At the most he could write a book about it and wonder where those ideas came from.’

  The figure led Elli to an antechamber and the door was firmly closed shut behind her.

  ‘But first, you have a gift for me, don’t you?’

  Elli looked surprised. The figure indicated the parchment. She shook it in the air between them.

  ‘This?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What does this have to do with what we are here for?’

  ‘Firstly, please put the parchment on the stand in front of the glass plate over there next to those items.’

  Elli turned and saw the plate. The relics and the book on the huge structure were positioned beside it. She walked to them and did as the figure asked.

  For some time nothing happened and Elli started to think the figure was playing with them. She was about to say something and opened her mouth to that effect, but was silenced by a sound coming from the parchment which began to vibrate and then jumped into the air and unfolded layer after layer until the whole of the floor was cluttered with its constituent parts.

  Elli’s eyes opened wide and stayed that way until the seemingly alive parchment had no more tricks to throw at her, its ability to give birth and multiply finally exhausted.

  ‘I had no idea it could be so long. What on earth is going on?’

  The figure smiled and instantly became the likeness of the last Emperor and then the Sultan Mehmed II and kept switching between the two.

  Elli was not impressed by the spectacle, but was becoming rather exasperated. ‘I’m overwhelmed by this exhibition of royalty paying their respects. There really is no need. You are remembered fondly. Now what’s going on? I presume this is not a courtesy visit.’

  In the meantime, part of the parchment flew back onto the plate and started to burn through and become one with the glass which was also melting, revealing a gaping hole underneath, a hole that kept expanding into a passage. The ghost of the Sultan was speaking.

  ‘Elli, follow me.’

  He took her hand and she was shocked that it felt solid and warm.

  The moment they touched the mouth of the passage, they were sucked in and walked easily through it. The passage was expanding as they were walking along and was lighting up to show them the way. Behind them the passage was gradually collapsing in on itself.

  They came onto a rock chamber. Elli shivered. The chill speared right through her bones. A light descended above her head and the chamber turned into the great hall of the Great Palace of Constantinople, the one built by Constantine the Great when he founded Constantinople in 330 A.D.

  The hall was empty apart from a revolving sphere in the middle of the room. It was a representation of the globe, with blinking lights like those of an airstrip at various locations on it. Next to the revolving sphere stood two figures that had their names strapped across their midriff.

  The names were floating, moving forward to meet Elli, then reversing course, as if under chase to return chastised to their owners, repeating the feat over and over again, as if intending to drill the identities of the two missionaries in Elli’s mind, until finally stopping, presumably when they judged that their mission had been accomplished.

  But Elli didn’t need that performance to know who they were. She recognised them instantly from their likeness on icons she had seen, though most saints looked more or less identical, in simple attire and long hair and beards, doing one of a short list of things, like kneeling and praying and supplicating and offering a hand or some other gift, looking enthralled at an adult or baby Jesus Christ, but mostly standing or sitting holding the Bible or a cross, or writing or doing nothing at all, looking wise and ravaged by time, and staring out ahead, piercing you with their gaze, as if posing for a professional photographer and at the same time trying to appear natural and unscripted and oblivious to the one who captures them for posterity or to their future captive
audience. They were Methodios and Kyrillos or Cyril, the Byzantine missionaries that brought Christianity to the Russians.

  Elli went closer. The sphere split horizontally in half, one half suspended above the other. In the space between the two halves was a halo and within it there were two icons in a perpetual motion of merging and splitting apart.

  One icon showed the figures of Methodios and Kyrillos. She could not make out the other. She stared in disbelief when suddenly something made touch-down, fitted into place and clicked inside her head.

  ‘Are these what I think they are? They are …, aren’t they?’

  The ghost’s appearance stopped at the likeness of the last Emperor. ‘Indeed, they are. The famed Likureian icons.’

  It was then that the surface of the upper half of the sphere slid back in a semi-circle movement and the book of the story of the construction of the structure appeared floating inside. The book opened up its pages, releasing its secrets and offering them to Elli’s greedy and supplicating eyes for consumption as an appetising course to temporarily sate their demands. Images, inventories and plans flew by.

  The structure was materialising in front of her very eyes. Once it had been completed she stared in awe at the three-dimensional hologram of the structure. Its complexity defied reality and her own imagination. Her brain was still struggling to process it when it disappeared as if in a puff of smoke.

  ‘Remember. Wake me up when the time is right and I’ll show you all that you can achieve.’ With those last words the ghost was gone.

  With a feeling of dizziness, as if thrown around in a washing machine, Elli was back to the normal surroundings, colours and sounds of one of the world’s greatest museums and in the same room she was standing in with the director beside her and the items still covered on the table in front of them.

  In reality time had not moved while she travelled through the strange vision. The director, dazed, was leaning his head from side to side as if to shake off something that bothered him and that he could not remember. Elli, whilst not saying anything about what she had just witnessed, broke the impasse.

  ‘OK, Mr Sumarov, let’s see what we have here.’ The director uncovered the items. Elli allowed him to give her a pair of gloves. She put them on and then began to turn the pages of the book. What she saw was what she remembered seeing in that vision-like experience she just had. She said nothing, but kept turning the pages.

  ‘I would like to study this book further, but I would not want to use any more of your time.’

  The director, as if expecting her to say that, moved to the side of the table and opened up a specially made small chest that Elli had not noticed before. He carefully put the relics and the book inside and then led Elli back to his office where he buzzed for his personal assistant. He gave instructions for the chest to be brought to his office. A few minutes later there was a knock on the door and two well-built security men came in with the chest.

  ‘You are to go with Mrs Symitzis here and only when that chest is in her plane, you are to come back.’

  Although Elli trusted the director, she wanted to make sure that the chest now in the director’s office was the chest she saw a few minutes earlier and that it contained the items she was taking away with her. She phrased her request politely.

  ‘Mr Sumarov, may I please have a quick look at the contents?’

  The director understood and did not take offence. He waived his hand at the men who set the chest down onto the floor and opened it. Elli went close, put on the special gloves, flicked through the book and checked the relics and was satisfied with what she saw. She turned to the director and nodded. He bowed to her and smiled in reply.

  She was already holding her bag with the parchment inside. She thought it had burned, but that only seemed to have happened in the strange experience she had a few minutes earlier. She found the unharmed parchment in her bag when she opened it to check her phone for any message from Aristo or Katerina.

  ‘Mr Sumarov, I am indebted to you for your help. Anytime I can do something for you, please let me know.’ Elli handed him her private number.

  ‘Mrs Symitzis, the honour and pleasure is all mine.’

  Alexei Sumarov stood and led her to the door and all the way to a back entrance leading to a small courtyard where Elli’s car had been instructed to wait for her. The two men placed the chest on the back seat and sat next to it. Elli sat in the front passenger seat. Alexei Sumarov waved her goodbye and went back inside. The car drove off.

  * * *

  Later analysis back in Cyprus on the body parts contained in the relics and comparisons with the blood of Elli’s family confirmed Iraklios’ story and the truth of the existence of the impostor who was on the throne of Constantinople in 1453 during the siege and the fall of the city to the Ottomans of Sultan Mehmed II.

  The book retrieved, actually borrowed, from the Hermitage revealed that the structure was built in Limassol in Cyprus, but did not refer to the exact location, or provided a description or some indication, at least, of the topography. Elli, through the Valchern Corporation mining division, arranged for geological scans through satellite of the subterranean strata of the city.

  * * *

  Elli was still concerned that she hadn’t heard from Aristo and Katerina and sent people to Crete to find out what happened to them.

  CHAPTER 46

  Limassol, Cyprus

  Present day

  Giorgos could not wait for the geological scans, but took it upon himself to do some research on the history of the old medieval quarter of Limassol, especially the area around Limassol Castle, the Church of Ayia Napa, the old Turkish Quarter and the old port. He called Katia in Athens.

  Katia had been with him during the expedition in Cappadocia and she was excited to help him with the laborious research. The most promising lead was when Giorgos was going through the book on the construction of the structure.

  He noticed an obscure entry about a tunnel entrance and an existing disused large pipe which was used for access and which was part of a network of pipes and aqueducts that used to carry water from the surrounding hills and nearby mountains North of the city to feed the city’s water system.

  Giorgos checked topographical surveys and unearthed plans that showed a series of catacombs under the Medieval Quarter. A name jumped out of the page. Mount Zalakas near the village of Trimiklini, about a twenty-minute drive North of Limassol. He wondered whether it was just that the water came from that area, it was known for its fresh mountain water after all, or whether that place had further significance.

  He found that there used to be a Byzantine church on the site of the Church of Ayia Napa in Limassol, a church that was knocked down to make way for Ayia Napa at the end of the 19th century. The old church was built around 1453 A.D. and was dedicated to Ayios (Saint) Konstantinos and Ayia (Santa) Eleni. It couldn’t have been a coincidence. Giorgos and Katia tried to locate any plans for the old church or any reference to its construction, some clue as to a connection with something underneath, but they drew a blank. Any such records that may have existed would have disappeared, unless …

  Giorgos remembered the book of the construction of the structure and he combed through it again with Katia for evidence of the construction of the old church. And, sure enough, there it was staring them in the face, details for the construction of a small building with icons and a holy table and frescos. That sounded like a church to them.

  Their only hope of access would be through Limassol Castle about a couple of hundred metres to the West, far enough to hide its connection, if any, but close enough to have provided the access to a possible underground structure. Giorgos and Katia got the plans of the castle and studied them for any unusual previous structures incorporated into it. But the plans of the castle did not indicate anything that resembled what they were looking for.

  They had to get on site. They obtained permission from the Cyprus Department of Antiquities within a couple of days and got dow
n to it. Little did they know that their movements were being watched and there was also that elusive traitor to complicate matters.

  Giorgos and Katia went to Limassol Castle and studied every surface. They found that materials that looked to have come from another, earlier building, had been used in its construction. They were especially intrigued by a whole wall in the lower part of the castle that seemed to have been much older than the castle itself. It seemed to have been hastily built, perhaps to cover something. The wall stared back with naked intent, challenging them.

  They sent bits of the stonework for analysis and it came back as the composition of the particular cement like mortar and stone that the Byzantines used in the construction of the Church of Ayia Sophia in Constantinople. The most interesting part of all was that the wall was dated to the middle of the 15th century, too close to the magic 1453 date to be a coincidence.

  The apparent coincidences were stacking up. That could only mean that they were indeed based on fact and led to the truth. Giorgos and Katerina were starting to believe that they were on the right track.

  Giorgos had brought special tools and carefully started to drill holes in the wall hoping to hit an open space behind it. He started to sweat. He wiped his face with the palm of his hand and then rested it on the stone next to where he had just drilled. The sweat dissolved the dust that had built up and revealed a symbol.

  He stared at it. It reminded him of something. He was sure he had seen it before. And then he remembered. It was the Imperial insignia that was on the Emperor’s ring that was hidden inside the icon that was in the Metropolitan Museum in New York. He made a mental note to ask James Calvell to send him the two items that were still locked up in James’ secret vault near his office at the museum.

  He looked at the stone again and started to drill a hole. He knew he had hit a vacant space when the echo of the drilling bounced back at him. Katia had gone outside for a quick smoke. Suddenly a part of the stone started to move revealing a small niche.