“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 remaining 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.”
Payne, Jones, and Allison walked between the large stacks of crates, still trying to grasp how many items had been rescued from Constantinople. A few of the lids were brittle with age, so they were able to peek inside without risking damage to the precious contents.
And what they saw was amazing.
Gold relics and coins. Marble statues. Silver vases. Bronze weapons. Gemstones and jewelry. Painted vessels. Greek amphoras. And thousands of ancient scrolls.
None of them could be read until they were translated by scholars, but the fountain of knowledge that they might contain was staggering.
“Hey, Allison,” Jones said as they continued to explore, “I just realized something.”
“What’s that?”
“Your thesis is going to have one hell of an ending.”
She laughed with childlike delight. “I was thinking the same thing.”
“Not only that,” he added. “You teamed up with Heinrich Schliemann to find this place.”
“I know! How wild is that?”
“Pretty damn wild.”
“Actually,” she admitted, “only one thing would make this better.”
Jones smiled. “Figuring out how to keep everything for ourselves?”
“No,” she said. “It would have been nice if we had found the Statue of Zeus. I mean, to discover one of the Seven Ancient Wonders of the World. That would have been, well, wonderful.”
While Jones and Allison continued to talk, Payne roamed to the far side of the cavern. In situations like this, the soldier in him always seemed to surface. Before he could enjoy the treasure, he needed to check the perimeter to make sure there were no possible threats. And if there were, he would eliminate them as quickly as possible.
Only in this case, he found no threats.
But he did find something that he couldn’t believe.
“Guys,” Payne called from his position near the back of the cave. “You have to see this.”
“See what?” Jones yelled back. “We’re busy playing with our gold.”
“Trust me, you need to see this. I can’t do it justice.”
Jones and Allison walked to the back of the cavern, where Payne was waiting for them to arrive. He was shining his light into an antechamber that hadn’t been visible from the entrance. Though not nearly as large as the main cavern, the space was big enough to store the most important treasure that the Ancient Greeks had recovered from Constantinople.
The object that Heinrich Schliemann had been looking for at the time of his death.
The one thing that all of them had hoped to find.
The disassembled pieces of the lost throne.
EPILOGUE
FRIDAY, JUNE 6
Limnos, Greece
Sixteen days had passed since the treasure had been discovered inside the Holy Mountain. During that time, Nick Dial had uncovered the answers to several questions.
As soon as he learned that the Spartans had used Richard Byrd’s yacht for their trip to Mount Athos, Dial contacted law enforcement officials in California, who acquired search warrants for Byrd’s home, office, and safe-deposit box. It didn’t take them long to find a direct link between Byrd and Apollo, the leader of the Spartans.
Several weeks earlier, Byrd had flown to Athens, rented a car, and driven to Spárti. A hotel reservation he had made with one of his fake identities confirmed his presence in the small town. While there, he purchased a disposable cell phone that was found at Apollo’s house, along with a map to the harbor in Leonidi, where Byrd’s yacht would be waiting for the Spartans, in case they required transportation. Phone records proved that several calls were made between Byrd’s and Apollo’s cell phones, apparently to coordinate the search for the treasure. This included the attack at Metéora. Since the Spartan village had no regular phone lines, this was the only way for Byrd to stay in touch with the men he had convinced to do his dirty work.
With this information, the Greek police were able to question the rest of the villagers, who were eventually found in the Taygetos Mountains, a few miles from their village. Most of them were uncooperative and unwilling to talk, but a few of them eventually broke down and revealed the Spartans’ motivation to go to Mount Athos.
Byrd had told Apollo that the Brotherhood possessed several documents that cast the Spartans in an unfavorable light. This included a document they referred to as “the book,” a comprehensive examination of Ancient Greece and all the city-states. One section supposedly contained inside information that had been written by a disillusioned Spartan. He hated the brutal culture he had been forced to endure from birth until he was in his mid-twenties, when he finally managed to slip away. Afraid that this information would leave a permanent stain on their heritage, Apollo and his men had vowed to do whatever they could to destroy it.
But their mission had been foiled.
The book-and thousands of other documents-would soon be examined by experts.
Which experts, though, was a matter of some contention.
Legally speaking, the treasure did not belong to anyone, since no one knew who had taken it to the mountain. The Brotherhood may have protected it for centuries, but that did not make it theirs. Furthermore, since the artifacts had supposedly been moved from Greece (and other parts of the world) to Constantinople and then to Mount Athos, there was no way of proving ownership of any of the items. Including the Statue of Zeus.
Was it stolen from Olympia? Or was it given to the Romans as a gift? No one knew for sure-and no one would know until everything inside the crates had been studied.
For the first few days after its discovery, Dial was able to keep news of the treasure from the outside world. He sealed off the cave and did n
ot allow anyone inside, claiming it was an Interpol crime scene. Which, in fact, it was. Nicolas had killed himself inside the cave, and as a result of the information he had provided before his death-including his claim that a collector from Dial’s homeland had recently caused the monks trouble-Interpol searched the phone records of the seven monks who made up the Brotherhood, looking for anything suspicious.
One call stood out among all the others.
A few days before the abbot from Metéora had been murdered alongside his brethren, he had called an unlisted number in Russia. The conversation lasted seventeen minutes. After this phone call, a large sum of money had been wired from an account in Athens to one in Moscow. The name on the Russian account was Alexei Kozlov, the assassin who had killed Richard Byrd.
That meant the Brotherhood had paid to have Byrd eliminated.
What prompted them to take such an extreme step was still unclear. Had they learned about Byrd’s search for Schliemann’s map? Or had they been warned about his relationship with the Spartans? Unfortunately, Dial didn’t know for sure. He assumed that the Brotherhood’s secret meeting at Metéora had been called so they could discuss the situation.
Ironically, it was that gathering that had made them such an easy target.
They had met to protect their organization, but the meeting had led to their slaughter.
From the deck of Jarkko’s yacht, Payne stared at the light blue water of the Aegean Sea. Jones was somewhere nearby, swimming or fishing or talking to one of the local ladies Jarkko had brought aboard. No matter where they went in Limnos, everyone knew the fun-loving Finn.
Payne would be joining them shortly, but first he had to update Dial on the latest news about the treasure. “Nick,” he said into his cell phone, “how’s life?”
“Busy. I’ve spent the last two weeks trying to keep your ass out of jail.”
“If it’s possible, I’d like to keep all of me out of jail. Not just my ass.”
Dial laughed. He was speaking to Payne on a secure line in his office at Interpol Headquarters. “Don’t worry. I’m a pretty good liar. I convinced the Greek government that I summoned you and D.J. as my personal backup once I learned of the trouble on Mount Athos.”
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