The Lost Throne paj-7

by Chris Kuzneski

  That meant whoever made them was still inside or had found another way out.

  With a gun in his right hand and a flashlight in his left, Payne continued forward, striding over the uneven ground. Deeper inside, the cave opened slightly, its ceiling climbing to eight feet and its width stretching to ten. Payne was appreciative. Not only could he walk upright, he also had room to maneuver in case he was attacked.

  Jones was next in line, his light burning bright. Allison was third, followed by Andropoulos and Dial. The four of them crept softly, watching Payne as he braved the tunnel ahead of them.

  Suddenly, he raised his hand and signaled them to stop.

  The group obliged, hardly making a sound.

  Up ahead, Payne could see a solitary figure sitting in the darkness. It was an old man, wrapped in a wool blanket. He was leaning against the back wall of the cave. A cane lay by his side. He looked frail and feeble, withered with age. His beard was long and unkempt. It rested on the front of his cloak like a gray scarf. His head was tilted forward, and his eyelids were closed.

  Payne wondered if the guy was still breathing.

  A moment later, he got his answer.

  Without opening his eyes, the old monk spoke, his words barely rising to a whisper. “I wondered when you would arrive. I have been waiting for you.”

  Payne grimaced in confusion. He had no idea who this man was or what he was talking about. He figured he might be a crazed hermit who lived in this cave.

  “What are you doing here?” Payne asked.

  The monk’s eyes sprang open. He stared defiantly at the flashlight, not willing to shield the light from his eyes. “I wasn’t talking to you. I was talking to Nick.”

  From the back of the pack, Dial heard his name. It took a few seconds for things to sink in, but once they did, he knew who was hiding in the cave.

  “Coming through,” Dial said as he squeezed his way past the others. He made his way to Payne, who was still shining his light on the old man.

  “Do you know this guy?” Payne whispered.

  Dial stared at the man and nodded. It was Nicolas, the old monk he had met on his first night at Metéora. The same one who appeared, forty years younger, in the framed photograph at Great Metéoron. The one man he had hoped to find at Mount Athos. And now he had.

  Of course, he never expected to find him like this-actually inside the mountain.

  “Hello, Nicolas. I’ve been looking for you.”

  The old monk smiled at the sound of Dial’s voice. “I thought as much.”

  “You’re a tough man to track down.”

  “I apologize. I have been busy.”

  Dial turned on his flashlight. “Doing what?”

  “My duty.”

  He took a step forward. “Your duty? I’m not sure what that means.”

  Nicolas grinned. “You have come this far. You must know something.”

  “Maybe so, but I was hoping you could fill me in on the rest.”

  “My pleasure, Nick. What would you like to know?”

  Dial raised his eyebrows in surprise. He hadn’t been expecting such an offer.

  But he planned on taking full advantage of it.

  74

  Dial crept closer, wondering what he should ask first. With so many questions, he didn’t know where to start. He opted for the very beginning. “Why were the seven monks at Metéora?”

  Nicolas answered. “That was where we always met. It gave us what we needed.”

  “Which was?”

  “Protection from those who sought the treasure.”

  Dial glanced at Payne and nodded. This was about the lost throne.

  “Why weren’t you killed at Metéora like the others?”

  “I did not arrive until after I was told of their deaths.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I was not invited to their meeting.”

  “But earlier you said we. You said Metéora was where we always met.”

  Nicolas nodded. “I also said was.”

  “You were no longer a part of the group?”

  “Age has certain limitations. Travel is one of them.”

  “And yet here you are.”

  Nicolas smiled meekly. “I had no choice. I am the only one left.”

  “The only one?”

  “The only one who knows where we moved the treasure.”

  “You moved the treasure?”

  “Long ago. Long before these recent threats.”

  Dial paused. “Hold on. If you moved the treasure, why are you here?”

  “Why? Because this is where the Brotherhood comes to die.”

  “The Brotherhood?”

  Nicolas nodded. “That was the name we were given long ago.”

  “By whom?”

  Nicolas smirked and pointed to the back corner of the cave. “By one of them.”

  Dial shined his light in that direction and was shocked by the sight. Hundreds of human skulls were stacked in a massive pile against the side wall. Many of them faced forward, creating the illusion that their empty eye sockets were staring at him. Fortunately, he did not scare easily. Or else he would have bolted from the cave.

  He considered the presence of the skulls. “Were they your brothers?”

  Nicolas nodded again. “All of them died with one thing in common.”

  “Which was?”

  “They died nobly, without revealing our secret. For that reason alone, they were brought here to share eternity. This is where we honor them. On our holiest mountain.”

  Dial nodded in understanding. “Which explains why you’re here. None of your brothers are left to move your remains, so you came here on your own. You’re sitting in the dark, waiting to die, so you can rest with your brothers in peace.”

  Nicolas smiled. “From the moment we met, I knew you were smart.”

  Dial ignored the flattery. “Trust me, I’m not that smart. For instance, I don’t know why this mountain is covered with Spartans. Or why they killed your brothers.”

  “The reason is simple. Over the centuries, many forces have sought the location of our treasure. Some of them were evil men, willing to kill us for our knowledge. Eventually, we opted to fight back. Blade against blade, blood against blood, all in the name of secrecy.”

  “But you’re a monk. Doesn’t violence go against your religion?”

  Nicolas grimaced. “Not if done for self-preservation. And that is what it was. We pursued those who pursued us, and struck them where they stood.”

  “And the Spartans?”

  Nicolas paused in thought. “Somebody struck us.”

  “Any idea who?”

  He shrugged as the color slowly drained from his face. “I was given no names, since my involvement with the Brotherhood was . . . fleeting. However, from what I have gathered, our treasure . . . has been the source of recent interest . . . from several collectors.” He paused to catch his breath. “Including some . . . from . . . your homeland.”

  Dial stepped forward, concerned by the anguish on the monk’s face and his sudden shortness of breath. “Nicolas? What’s wrong? Are you all right?”

  The monk wheezed. “I will be . . . soon.”

  Dial rushed forward, worried that the monk was having a heart attack. He grabbed the wool blanket that was wrapped around the old man’s torso, and when he touched it, he realized it was damp. He didn’t know why until he ripped it off the monk.

  Nicolas had a dagger in his hand and two large slashes through the femoral arteries in his thighs. For the past few minutes, he had slowly been bleeding to death while he calmly explained where he wanted to die.

  By the time Dial noticed, there was nothing he could do to prevent it.

  Everyone was stunned by the turn of events. All of them had been listening to Dial’s conversation, yet none of them had noticed the old man slowly dying in front of them.

  His death-and his final message about the treasure being moved-was a setback they hadn’t expected.

>   “Now what?” Payne asked Jones and Allison.

  Both of them shrugged, disheartened.

  Payne pulled out his copy of the treasure map. “Why don’t you two take another look at the map? Maybe we missed something important.”

  Jones shook his head. “The map worked fine. We found the cave right where it was supposed to be. But there’s nothing in here.”

  “I know that, but-”

  “Jon,” Jones argued, “think about it. If the Brotherhood moved the treasure in the last century, it was after Schliemann died. So his map wouldn’t show the new location.”

  Payne nodded. “I realize that, but who’s to say when the monks moved it. What if they moved it before Schliemann died? Maybe his map led us here for a reason. Maybe there’s a secret clue that will point us to another location.”

  “Somehow I doubt that.”

  “Hey,” Payne said, “I know you’re disappointed and all, but we just climbed a mountain to get here. We’re not going back down until you’ve looked around some more.”

  Jones groaned in frustration. “Fine! I’ll look around the stupid cave, but if a giant boulder starts rolling at me from the ceiling, I swear to God I’ll-”

  He stopped in mid-sentence and cocked his head to the side.

  Payne stared at him, waiting for him to finish his rant. “You’ll what?”

  Jones ignored the question. Deep in thought, he glanced around the cave, slowly considering everything about it. “This cave is kind of small, isn’t it?”

  “It’s no Carlsbad Caverns, if that’s what you mean.”

  “No,” Jones said as he shined his flashlight all around him. “I mean, the damn thing is really small. If they used to keep a huge treasure in here, where in the hell did they hide it?”

  Payne paused. “That’s a very good point.”

  “I mean, I doubt they just left it sitting out in the open. That wouldn’t make sense. Not if the Brotherhood was as careful as they seemed to be.”

  Allison looked at the mouth of the cave. “What about the entrance? Could they have concealed it with rocks and branches?”

  “That’s possible,” Jones conceded. “But unless they did it just right, it wouldn’t have looked natural. And if you’re trying to hide something, that’s a dead giveaway.”

  Payne stared at his friend, who had the slightest hint of a smile. “Hold up. Do you know where the treasure is?”

  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?”