by Alex Archer
Annja laughed. It was nice to talk about something that was normal, something that didn’t have crime scene photographs and the threat of death attached to it.
Unfortunately, the small talk ended all too soon.
“I’ve looked at the image you sent me, but I’m afraid I can’t help you with much more information than you already have.”
Annja put her phone on speaker and opened the file she’d started on the inscription that had been on the butterfly. “I’ll take what you can give me.”
“The language is Greek, but it is a very ancient dialect. You’ve heard of Mycenaean Greek?”
“Yes.” Annja paused a moment, assembling her thoughts. “The Mycenaean civilization flourished in the Late Bronze Age, around the second millennium BC. The language fragmented in the early Iron Age after the Mycenaean civilization collapsed. There were at least four distinct dialects. Primarily, though, the language we understand from that period comes from the Arcadocpriot dialect, as well as the Aeolic, Doric and Ionic, which were regional.”
“You would shame my linguistics students, Annja.”
“I brushed up on the language a little since I emailed you that image.”
“Those dialects you mentioned fostered others. People speak differently regionally, based on experience and word choice. For instance, the Aeolic dialect was further divided into Boeotian and Thessalian. And the Lesbian dialect.” Thodoros sighed. “My undergrads titter and giggle when I mention that particular dialect.”
“Isle of Lesbos, right?”
“We know it well because of the writings left behind by the poet Sappho, whom Plato called the tenth muse, and who created new poetry by writing about her own thoughts instead of imagined adventures of the gods.”
Annja’s mind was already flying. “Lesbos was west of the Asia Minor coastline and north of Smyrna.” She opened a map on her tablet PC and looked at the island in the Aegean Sea. “Separated from Turkey by the Mytilini Strait.”
“Yes, it’s the third largest island in Greece. Have you ever visited it?”
“No.”
“If you get the chance, you should. Beautiful place. Mountains and olive groves as far as the eye can see. Unless you’re looking out at the Aegean, then there’s the ocean, of course. Wonderful people there, salt of the earth. All the rest and relaxation you could care for, and many historical sites to visit. You would love it.”
“Do you think this language was from Lesbos?”
“I wouldn’t know for sure, but I think it’s a good possibility.”
“Because of the dialects?”
“Exactly.” Papassavas paused. “I also believe that the language is in a code.”
“A code?”
“Yes, a simple one. Probably letter substitution. Much of Greek and Roman history was concurrent. And Julius Caesar invented the letter substitution code. Although the Jewish people would argue that because they had the Atbash cipher. You haven’t said where you got this artifact.”
“It turned up as part of marine salvage in Genoa.”
“Fascinating. I’d heard they’ve had earthquakes again there. Those almost always make the sea give up something.”
“They have a tendency to allow the sea to take things, too.”
“True. Do you know what this was made for?”
“I have no idea. I haven’t yet seen the actual piece.”
“When you do, you’ll have to let me know your impressions.” Papassavas sighed. “Until then, I’ve got a desk covered in papers that I have to grade.”
“I’ll leave you to that, then.”
“I’ll be back in touch as soon as I have something for you.”
“Thank you. I’ll owe you one.”
“When you get the chance, come see us, Annja. The children would be thrilled to see their favorite television star again.”
“I will.” Annja thanked him, then hung up and laid the phone aside. A quick glance at her watch told her she still had four more hours of flight. Eyes burning, she shut down the tablet PC and shoved it in her backpack. Then she put her seat back and closed her eyes.
In her dreams, clockwork ghosts rode witches’ brooms and spoke in thick, Russian accents.
19
Melina parked her car as close as she could to the Archaeological Museum of Piraeus, then she walked to the new two-story building, which had been constructed in 1981. The museum had been a favorite of her father’s. Xydias Andrianou had brought her there several times in his search for the mysterious clockwork maker. Before Roux had killed him.
She wondered if Cardinal Scuro had known this museum had been a favorite of her father’s. It was possible, because the man knew a lot about a great many things. That was why she was here now.
It was only a five-minute walk down to the reception area for tourist ships in the port. Reaching her destination in front of the museum, yet not finding the man waiting for her, she took her phone from her jacket pocket and found Cardinal Scuro in her address book. When she pressed his name and the phone rang, the call was answered almost immediately.
“I see you.” His voice was deep and melodic.
Even if it made her appear weak, Melina couldn’t help glancing around as she put her phone away. Ten yards from her, Cardinal Scuro stepped from behind the corner of the museum and walked across the grass toward her.
His real name was Dino Corvo. Once upon a time, Cardinal Scuro had worked in the Vatican as a translator down in the private libraries. That was before he’d been discovered selling information from secret church documents. Although he no longer had access to those libraries, he still had translation skills and knowledge of arcane history no one could strip from him.
He was a young man, only a few years older than Melina, and wore his black hair in ringlets. A neatly shaved black beard covered his chin and helped him appear older than he was. Most people thought he was kind and gentle, a stolid man, a man who would listen to their problems without judgment. Melina had heard women speak of him that way. They only saw what they wanted to.
In Melina’s opinion, it was Cardinal Scuro’s eyes that gave him away. They were dark and flat, devoid of warmth. In some ways, his eyes reminded her of her own.
Dressed all in black with a calf-length duster to blunt the early chill coming in from the ocean, Scuro still looked like he belonged to the church. All that was missing was the clerical collar.
He handed her a takeout cup and kept one for himself. “Chocolate. I know you like it.”
Melina accepted it and breathed in the heady scent of the chocolate. “Thank you. But I didn’t come all this way for a hot chocolate.” She sipped it, finding it just cool enough to drink without burning her tongue.
“No, you didn’t.” The breeze ruffled Scuro’s duster.
Out in the harbor, boat klaxons rang. Fishing boats sailed on the horizon, in search of the catches they hoped to bring in to feed the tourists.
“I don’t know why I’m here at all. We could have handled this over the phone.”
“Because I asked you to meet me, and sometimes I like seeing you, Melina.”
Meaning that there were other times he didn’t like seeing her? Melina quashed the thought. She’d never been interested in Scuro. Men were a passing annoyance to her, something to do during downtime when she had it. At most, this man was a conundrum she hadn’t quite solved.
“Did you find something on the clockwork butterfly?”
Scuro’s lips flickered in a quick smile. “You’re always so impatient.”
She regarded him coldly. “I am more impatient concerning this piece. Someone else currently has it, and I want it back. More than that, I want to know where it came from.”
“Who is the other person?”
There was no reason to withhold th
e information. If Cardinal Scuro wasn’t able to suss that out, he wasn’t worth asking. “Garin Braden.”
Scuro frowned. “He’s a very dangerous man.”
“You know him?”
“We’ve had dealings.”
“Face-to-face?”
He shook his head. “I’ve never dealt with Braden directly. Some of my acquaintances have...encountered Braden while acquiring items he also wanted. More than a few of them are no longer with us.”
“Evidently they weren’t equal to him.”
“And you are?” Scuro’s lips smiled again, but not his dark eyes. Amusement was just another of the masks that he wore. “I would hate to lose you, Melina. You provide interesting projects.”
“I am more than his equal.”
“Yet Braden has the butterfly that you are after.”
Melina narrowed her eyes and took a moment to check her anger. “Tread carefully. My grandfather and I value your skills, but they are not irreplaceable.”
“My apologies. I did not mean to offend.”
Melina knew the man had intended to get a reaction from her.
“Walk with me.”
She fell into step beside him as they crossed the grass.
“You’ve never said what it is that you want with the clockwork artifacts.”
“They’re a means to get to an old enemy.”
“Someone other than Braden?”
“Yes.”
“May I ask who?”
Melina hesitated only for a moment. Again, if Scuro didn’t know the old man’s name, especially when associated with Garin, then any information he had wasn’t worth much. “A man named Roux.”
“A French name.”
“We believe so.”
“‘We’?”
“Roux has been an enemy to my family for a great many years.” He killed my father! Melina put her hands in her jacket pockets so Scuro would not see how they’d knotted into fists.
“You don’t have a surname for Roux?”
“No.”
“Interesting.”
Cars passed on the streets. Taxis took tourists toward the port. A few pedestrians used the sidewalks. Melina never knew if Cardinal Scuro was alone, or if he had someone watching over him. She had her own two men sitting in a car half a block away.
“Tell me about the butterfly,” she said.
Scuro shook his head. “I don’t know anything about the butterfly. I’d like to see it at some point. If you ever get your hands on it.”
“By that time I might not need you.”
He chuckled. “I doubt that’s the case. There are things in the world that you have no clue about.” He sipped his chocolate. “However, before you lose patience with me, I can tell you about the inscription.”
Melina held her breath.
“The inscription was most likely not on the original butterfly.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because the inscription was put there by one of Julius Caesar’s soldiers. A centurion named Gabinius.”
After a brief search of her memory, Melina shook her head. “I have never heard of him.”
“I would have been surprised if you had. Centurion Gabinius has no real historic distinction.” Scuro looked at her with a mocking grin. “Except that he was sent on a secret mission by Caesar during the waning years of the dictator’s rule.”
“What mission?”
“Gabinius was sent to find a weapon. A fabled clockwork that would have tilted the odds against Caesar unless he stopped it and put them once more in his favor. Do you know much about Roman history?”
“Enough.”
“About Caesar’s last days?”
“He was preparing for war against the Parthian Empire.”
“More than that, he was planning on laying waste to the Caucasus, Scythia, and take out Germania on the way through Eastern Europe. At the same time, relations with Egypt were rocky, though Caesar had taken Queen Cleopatra as a lover and might have fathered a child with her. His ambitions knew no bounds. That was why his detractors killed him.” Scuro sipped his chocolate again. “During his travels, Caesar had seen many strange and wondrous things. At some point, he learned of Michalis the Toymaker. Have you heard of him?”
Melina reflected only for a moment. “No.” But that didn’t mean that the man wasn’t mentioned somewhere in her father’s journals.
“Not many people know about Michalis. Even I don’t know what’s truth and what’s fabrication when it comes to this man. He is an enigma. According to most of the reports I’ve read, he lived some three hundred years before the birth of Christ.”
Doing the math only took a moment. “That’s well before Caesar’s time.”
“Two hundred and fifty years or so, yes.”
“Michalis would have been dead.” Even as she said that, Melina thought of Roux and Garin, how they both seemed to be over a hundred years old. How was that possible?
“Definitely.”
But perhaps not. Not if one of those clockwork creations of his could stop a man from growing older. Melina knew her grandfather would be greatly interested. “Then how did Gabinius manage to find Michalis?”
He shook his head. “The centurion didn’t find Michalis. He found the toymaker’s workshop. That was what he had been tasked to find.”
“How did Gabinius know where to look?”
“Lore. Fragments of tales. Whispers and rumors. The usual research when treasure hunters go looking for legendary things. Several centurions were sent in search of Michalis’s wonders. Gabinius, perhaps, found where the toymaker worked.”
“Where was that?”
Coming to a stop, Scuro turned and gestured to the sea. “Somewhere out there. From everything I have read about the man, it is believed that Michalis was Greek. It’s rumored that he lived somewhere out in the Aegean Sea on a small, private island, and that his workshop was underground.”
“How do you know this?”
“Because Gabinius reported this to Caesar. The church has two of his reports to Caesar in their files. And there are other memoirs that talk about Michalis’s workshop. Only a few were ever allowed to visit him there. Usually the only visitors were models.”
“Models?”
“Men, women and animals Michalis brought in so that he could sculpt them. He needed resources for his creations.”
“His toys were supposed to help fight wars?”
“According to legend, yes. Some say he had an army of clockwork soldiers that would battle any who tried to come unannounced to his island.”
“Do you believe that?”
Scuro stared out at the harbor. “As Hamlet says, ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’”
“Michalis lived well before the Roman Catholic Church was established. Why would they be interested in a Greek toymaker?”
He dropped his voice. “Because the church found one of Michalis’s clockworks at a village outside Rome that had been burned to the ground in 513 AE. Every man, woman and child had been killed.”
“How?”
“No one knows. There were no survivors. All that was left was a clockwork goat.”
“A goat?”
Scuro nodded. “The church investigator sent to look into the matter destroyed the goat and scattered the pieces. Supposedly none of the clockwork remains intact.” He paused. “Rumors began to circulate among the people and the church that Michalis was in league with Satan.”
“Do you know where the location of the village is?” It might be worth sending a team there to investigate. After so many years, finding something was improbable, but with today’s forensic tools it was worth trying.
“No. All record of the village’s location was expunged even from the church’s most secret records. After all, it’s one thing to have people believe in Satan, but quite another to present evidence of it.”
“Then the whole thing could be a lie. There’s no village, no goat, no solid report.”
“You’re right, of course. But the story was tied to the file the church has on Michalis. There are rumors of some of his other creations killing, as well.”
“Unsubstantiated?”
“They don’t have any concrete data on anything recent. The last report was that village. The butterfly you almost had your hands on would be the first such discovery in over fifteen hundred years.”
Melina frowned. “There was another clockwork.”
Interest sparked in Scuro’s dead eyes. “What was it?”
“A clockwork snail.”
“Do you have it?”
“No.”
“Did it exhibit any special abilities?”
Melina studied Scuro’s face. Normally she wasn’t able to discern much there, but this morning she could see his excitement. “You tell me.”
“There is talk of one of Michalis’s creations reaching the mainland. A snail that caused dreams of the future.” Scuro looked deep into her eyes. “That was the snail you’re referring to, wasn’t it?”
“Tell me more about the snail.” That clockwork had forever changed Melina’s family. She wasn’t going to give out information about it until necessary. “Who had it?”
“A fisherman caught it in his nets near Pylos, what was at one time called Navarino, where the Russians, British and French joined forces with Greece to destroy the Ottoman-Egyptian fleet during the Greek War of Independence. According to papers I have read, a ship’s captain for Mehmet Ali of Egypt had the clockwork snail. Selim was supposed to have had an extraordinary run of good luck. Almost as though he knew where his enemies were going to be on any given day.”
“You think Selim was dreaming about those battles before they happened?”
He shrugged. “Not me, but the writer who recorded this story certainly did.”
