“You’re a fucking asshole,” he says. “You’re a piece of shit for doing that. Don’t leave it dangling down here. Ian, pull it up! It’s not fair!”
“I know.”
I walk to the generator and pry open the side hatch. As I yank the plastic gas tank from the machine, the orange lights sputter into darkness. The entire shrine is swallowed in the hole.
Out in the hot night, I find Christos sitting at a distance on a rock.
“The generator broke,” I tell him. “Charlie asked that you get him tomorrow.”
Christos lifts his head and glances behind me.
“He wants one more night there. Penance. Tomorrow you take him to the police.”
We return down the trail. Crawling into the water, I aim for the white, rocking glow of Domitian, holding the letter above the waves. I dip my face into the sea to wipe the tears and sweat away. Far beyond the swaying mast is the Monastery of St. John the Divine. What are the monks praying for in their isolated cells as the entire island erupts in celebration around them? Are they praying for peace or for the end or for another day exactly like this one, filled with its ferocious stake of beauty and rage? On the very day that Charlie was made a billionaire, he became free.
EPILOGUE
The Athens airport is a frenzy of arrivals and departures, a luminous buffer zone between land and sky. Heretics scream at check-in counters clutching canceled tickets. A Nigerian family in yellow dashikis lines up for frozen lattes. Lonely single men slink into magazine stalls and into interfaith prayer rooms. Trapped birds perch on surveillance equipment. Two teenagers kiss passionately by the security scanners. But mostly it’s commuters crisscrossing the terminal like sleepwalkers plagued with nightmares of impending deadlines. I grab my suitcase and stroll over to the blinking monitor to check the departure times.
I, Ian Bledsoe, am in search of salvation. The good news is I have one million euros to find it. That’s $¹,¹38,050 U.S., according to today’s exchange rate. Don’t ask me how that’s determined. Tomorrow or yesterday the amount would be different. A little more, a little less.
17:01 Athens Madrid
Wheels down just after sunset. I’ll find a room at one of the old hotels across from the Prado, and in the first light of tomorrow I’ll recoup my losses. New dress shirts, made to measure, new pants, a camel sport coat, black crocodile loafers, underwear—everything but a phone. I’ll rent an apartment with herringbone floors and leave it unfurnished except for a mattress and an upright piano by the window. There will be time for lessons: piano, painting, botany, Castilian. I’ll take the days slow, a rambler of boulevards, a lurker in the parks, steering clear of bars until I get too solitary, and even then, club soda only. I will choose my acquaintances carefully, a nonrestless set prone to outdoor concerts and weekend drives in the country. The sex will be good, and the food better, and the nights won’t hurt, and I’ll grow. I will build a new Ian out of this rubble, a shining man.
17:23 Athens New Delhi
I will land in a sunrise of pea-green smog, hot sulfur, burning tin, and oxygen laced with the finest particulate matter on the planet. I will taxi past homes that look and sound like car collisions, past bored cows and naked children with naked eyes. The smells alone will be otherworldly. Delhi will be like walking through a haunted house with all the lights on, and the tourist museums won’t be bastions of culture but brief respites from it. I will surprise Helen Bledsoe on her doorstep. After our reunion, we will have hard work ahead. Even in India, one million dollars won’t be much seed money to start an orphanage. But a family, by nature, is an infinitely expandable enterprise, and the Bledsoes will be committed to doing our share. To love, to help, to make the world one degree less wicked. Maybe one day, standing beside my mother, I will come to feel I’ve earned my life.
17:58 Athens Cape Town
18:12 Athens Prague
18:46 Athens Singapore
19:18 Athens Buenos Aires
The whole world is reachable from here.
For a second, I catch sight of them, the men in black balaclavas crouching behind the benches, running with bent backs alongside luggage trolleys, collecting their rifles in the restroom alcoves. They’re gathering for their assault, and they mean to steal everything from us. But in another blink they vanish, a glitch in the eye or the shadow of a plane taking off.
The good news is that the time is still not near. We have hours, we have years to go.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As much as I hope to have gotten down the island of Patmos accurately in physical description, I hope no reader takes any of the characters in this book as reflections of actual persons. The citizens of The Destroyers, their histories, and their actions are entirely fictional, dreamed up in the cave of my writing room and as true to life as the creatures that haunt the Book of Revelation (special thanks to St. John the Divine for the constant inspiration). That said, I’m eternally grateful to all the Patmian regulars and locals who offered me their time, stories, houses, boats, advice, and a seat at their tables on my many trips to the island for research. Chief among them are Owen Madden, Marios Photiades, Prince Michael of Greece, Marina Karella, Tobias Meyer, Maddalena and Raffaele Mincione (for the test-run boat ride to Turkey), Stavros the captain, Scott Morse, Vassilis, Yannis Strata, John Stefanidis (for the tour of his exquisite grounds), Karla Otto, and Angela Ismailos. Thank you to Dennis Freedman and Dakis Joannou for essential introductions. Thank you to Athens attorneys Theodore N. Rakintzis and Leonidas C. Georgopoulos for the education in Greek law. Thank you to Michael Barasch for pointing me in the right direction and to Howard G. McPherson (Mac) for the vital mentoring in maritime law.
This book would never have been written without the help and encouragement of its dedicatee, my friend and agent, Bill Clegg. It also would never have come together without the deft touch and sagacious eyes of my editor, Jennifer Barth. Thank you to the whole Harper team, particularly Jonathan Burnham for his support and understanding of the territory. Across the water, deepest appreciation goes to Simon & Schuster UK, including Suzanne Baboneau, Jo Dickinson, Rowan Cope, and the mighty sentence-sharpener Sophie Orme.
I wouldn’t be anywhere without the friends and family who get me through, a few of whom are mentioned here: George Miscamble, James Oakley, Wade Guyton, Thomas Alexander, Joseph Logan, the folks at Interview Magazine, Adam Kimmel (for the chess lessons), Alexei Hay, Claudia Aranow, Patrik Ervell, T. Cole Rachel, Will Chancellor, Ana and Danko Steiner, and Edmund White. And, of course, my Ohio family of mom, grandmother, Heather, and Sam. We had to draw pictures inspired by the Book of Revelation in Catholic school; I’m sure that helped feed the beast.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CHRISTOPHER BOLLEN is the author of Orient, an NPR Best Book of the Year, and the critically acclaimed Lightning People. He is the editor at large at Interview Magazine. His work has appeared in the New York Times, New York Magazine, GQ, and Artforum, among others. He lives in New York.
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ALSO BY CHRISTOPHER BOLLEN
Orient
Lightning People
COPYRIGHT
THE DESTROYERS. Copyright © 2017 by Christopher Bollen. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
Cover design by Joseph Logan
Map by Noah Springer, copyright © 2016 Springer Cartographics LLC
ISBN 978-0-06232998-1
EPub Edition June 2017 ISBN 9780062330000
A
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