The Icon

by Neil Olson

  The man was crouched by the long, dark table, gazing fixedly into the hallway beyond. He had clearly been there for some time, listening, waiting. He must be warned of what was about to happen, and Ioannes took a step forward, the floor beneath him groaning softly. The big man came out of his crouch and turned, finger to his lips and gun hand fiercely gesturing the priest back into the kitchen.

  The air exploded with the sound of gunfire. Blood erupted through the big man’s jacket and Ioannes doubled over as something punched him in the stomach. They fell together, the bearded man twisting as he did to fire once at a thin figure standing in the hall.

  The priest realized he had been shot as he hit the ground, and he waited for the pain to come. He rolled onto his side, looking to his unfortunate companion. The big man dragged himself into a sitting position against the wall, bleeding copiously through his shirt and jacket. He was angry.

  “Son of a bitch,” he hissed, fumbling at his shirt with one hand and lifting the pistol with the other. It roared twice more, blowing chunks of plaster out of the opposite wall. “Damn it all to hell.” He looked at his oozing chest, then at Ioannes, shaking his head. “Fucking priests.”

  Ioannes attempted to reach out a comforting hand, but the arrival of the pain stopped him. A long shudder racked the bearded man’s body and his wide eyes became fixed at a distant point. The pistol fell from his right hand. “Fucking priest,” he whispered again, and then was still.

  It grew silent once more. A circle of throbbing discomfort was expanded from Ioannes’ diaphragm to encompass his whole body, and he had to bite down against the agony, taking shallow breaths. The test was always more difficult than expected, he reminded himself, but the thought was hard to hold on to. He succeeded now in reaching a hand out to wrap around the ankle of the man whose death he had just caused. Give rest with thy saints, O Lord, to this thy servant…he didn’t know the man’s Christian name, or if he even was a Christian, but the matter would be sorted out above. Too damaged to indulge in scolding or grieving, he refocused his mind on the task. Everything happened for a reason. The wound replaced his agitation with a mind-cleansing pain, and removed the possibility of escape. Slowly, excruciatingly, Ioannes pulled himself up on his elbows and dragged his stricken body back into the kitchen.

  The smell of gas was strong; not as strong as he would have liked, but then, he was on the floor. An alcove with drawers was beside the range, and he pulled himself over there, noting the snaking blood trail behind him as he rolled over. He coughed wetly, tasting iron. His limbs were almost too heavy to use, but he pulled open the drawers, searching for one thing. There was not much time. The man who had shot him was probably the same one the big man had faced in the rear corridor. They had each circled around the house to ambush the other, the thin man winning the game because of Ioannes’ interference. Now he would circle back and find the bloody priest sprawled here. Very good, but let Ioannes find what he needed first.

  “Father, forgive me,” said an arch voice from the rear corridor.

  “You should not have stood so close to him. It was an accident.”

  There are no accidents, thought Ioannes, his hand finding, at last, the familiar cardboard box. Calmness swept over him, and the keen euphoria of great possibility. The fumes were so potent he could barely stay conscious.

  “I have great respect for priests,” the man spoke again, closer.

  “My uncle, you know…” The surly fellow caught the smell then, and rushed across the room to the gas range. Ioannes saw the blond hair and narrow face, just as the cool blue eyes saw him lying there in the alcove. The man’s hand was upon the first dial, twisting it to OFF, but the eyes grew wide when they saw what it was the priest held.

  “Don’t,” breathed the Dutchman.

  “I forgive you,” said Ioannes, striking the match.

  26

  T he muffled boom reached Matthew through the cool tiles of the bathroom floor. He had been lying there with a blood-soaked towel wrapped around his right hand, greasy sweat covering his face and neck, legs vibrating uncontrollably. Fear or shock, he wasn’t sure which. Whispered voices had come to him from the corridor, and several times a shadowy movement could be seen in the space under the closed door. They would find him. That seemed certain, and he would die like a wounded animal, quivering here on the floor. It was a sickening thought, but he had not been able to figure out any kind of plan.

  The noise below filled him with a perverse sense of hope. It was possible that the attackers themselves had caused it, but to what purpose, especially downstairs? More likely someone else had joined the fray, or some device had detonated prematurely. Matthew had no idea, only a strong guess that chaos was his friend. He waited a few minutes to see what would follow. There was no sound in the corridor, but the smell of smoke began to reach him. He must get out.

  Gently, Matthew pulled the bathroom door open with his good hand. A few inches, then a few more. Still nothing. Finally, he shuffled out on his knees. Black smoke billowed up the back stairs and raced across the ceiling, and the thick snap of flames below was audible. Crawling with the injured hand was difficult, but the acrid fumes required that he stay low. As quickly as he could, Matthew scampered around the corner into the next corridor, then along the wall to Fotis’ bedroom.

  Just inside the door, two old men were wrestling on the rug. The one on top, in the gray suit, must be Müller, who was cuffing furiously at Fotis’ head, but without sufficient force to do much harm. The Walther was half under the bed. There was no sign of Müller’s gun. Matthew guessed that they must have surprised each other at the door and come to blows before either one could fire. He sensed rather than saw that there was someone else in the room, but he chose to ignore this for the moment.

  Getting most of the way to his feet, Matthew attempted to drag Müller off using only his left hand, but a fierce wave of dizziness and nausea pushed him back to his knees. The old men ignored him. Fotis bit Müller’s hand and the German howled, striking the Greek on the temple with real force. Fotis went slack, and Müller scrambled off him, sprawling on his face as Matthew punched him in the shin. Smoke hung thick on the ceiling. The light through the windows was becoming obscured, and the air was bad.

  Matthew’s gaze went to the mantel, and the other figure was there, all in shadow. The burned man, standing by the icon. They were a pair, the burned man and the ruined Mary, now surrounded by a weird glow. The same eyes, the same color to their robes; they were a matching set. The man stood in for John the Baptist, the third member of the triumvirate, on the right. And there was Mary on the left, with Christ, the object of their veneration, invisible in the air between them. Of course it was not real. An illusion of smoke and light, the delusion of a shocked brain and troubled spirit. Indeed, when he tried to look straight at the figure it seemed to lose its substance. It was only when Matthew’s hungry gaze fixed on the icon that the man grew strong again, great-eyed, solemn, waiting. There was a choice involved. Many before had faced it. The three living men in the room faced it now.

  Müller was on his knees at the foot of the bed. He had retrieved his pistol and was searching his jacket for something, perhaps bullets, coughing hideously all the while. Fotis was shaking his head, attempting to rise. Matthew was watching them both, watching it all. The air was becoming poisonous, and he must do something at once. The icon called. He half stood, mind reeling, and imagined crossing the room, pushing Müller aside, seizing the Holy Mother, and rushing for the door. It would be easy, but his feet would not move. The burned man watched him. There was no judgment there, and no assistance. Ioannes’ words came back to Matthew. The work’s power was too strong, it bent intentions. Why had he come to this house? Remember. To save a life. Not for the icon, but to try to save a life.

  The towel had come off somewhere, and his right hand bled freely from the bullet hole in his palm. Matthew ignored it, bent low to the dusty carpet to suck in a last breath of smokeless air, then proceeded to haul
his struggling godfather onto his shoulder.

  “What are you doing?” raged the Snake.

  Legs shaking with the effort, Matthew rose to his feet, his head immediately shrouded in mist. Weak fists pounded on his back, old legs kicked the air.

  “No, no, not me, boy. The Mother. Save the Mother.”

  Matthew shuffled out of the room without a backward glance. Fire had reached the back of the second floor, and the visibility was very poor. He found the railing without going over it, and slid along to the top of the front staircase. Whoever and whatever waited below could not be worse than the conditions upstairs had become. Fotis was frantic.

  “You fool. Go back for the Mother. What do you think you are doing?”

  Choosing the living, thought Matthew as he started down.

  Andreas had traveled over great time and distance before the girl awakened him. Some places he did not know, others he remembered well. The crypt beneath the church, and the child Mikalis, staring at him with the eyes of an old man. Pretty Glykeria smiling as they passed on the village street. Young boys mixing clay and straw with their feet, to make the bricks that would rebuild their burned homes. The balcony of his old apartment, with Maria, young and dark-haired, and Alekos playing with toy soldiers at their feet, the sweet resiny smell of a summer dusk in Athens. He went back to the hillside chapel again, with Kosta and Ioannes, and he noticed something new this time, something he had to remember for Matthew. He went to Müller’s well-guarded house at dawn; he watched the German’s face as Müller promised there would be no executions. He sat among the old, twisted apple trees in the late morning, eating bread, exhausted by his night’s work, and heard the ordered rattle of twenty rifles. The bread falling from his hands, the knowledge that he had been betrayed. All over again, though less intensely, he felt horror turn to rage, rage to sadness, sadness to resolve. He saw the hasty grave and the wooden cross in the Argentinean countryside, the end of the journey.

  The anger was gone. In dreamtime, he could not maintain it. The white-haired specter who had walked into Fotis’ apartment had Müller’s eyes but was otherwise a pale imitation. A tired, desperate old man. Andreas could summon neither hate nor forgiveness; the fellow was simply pathetic. It would be best if he died, but Andreas doubted that he would be the man to kill him. In fact, he had no expectation of seeing the conscious world again until Ana Kessler woke him. And then, how hard it was to return. He had been light as a breath of air in his dreams, able to see and understand events that had been veiled in fear, rage, sorrow, lust the first time through. He had felt himself making the separation from petty concerns. How hard it was to return to the world, to this feeble aching form, to this weak and sluggish mind. Every bruise, every scar and strain, every insult to body and spirit over seventy-nine years was reintroduced to him in the space of a few moments. This brutal accumulation of experience was his life, and it was not done with him yet.

  But Matthew’s Ana was beautiful, and beauty was always worth waking up for. Matthew’s Ana, that was what she called herself after he almost took her head off. The cold water on his face was effective, but it had felt cruel to him just then. Something bit at his wrists. He was surprised to be alive. He had no idea where Müller had gone, but it seemed logical that he was in the house, with Matthew, Fotis, and whomever else. Andreas’ will leaped ahead, his body dragged after, and he did not fight the woman when she gave him her shoulder for support.

  The sound of the blast deep within the house caused them to stop. They waited a minute before moving, to see what would follow. When nothing did, they again made for the open door, from which smoke had now begun to drift.

  To the left was a handsomely furnished living room. Ahead, stairs went up to a corridor already filling with smoke. Smoke was also billowing in from the rear of this lower hall and gathering against the ceiling of all these front rooms. To the right a dark-paneled dining room was gathering smoke fastest, as actual flames spat from a doorway in back. A bloodied figure sat against the far wall, next to the French doors. Ana saw him just as Andreas did.

  “Benny.” She rushed toward him.

  “Stay down,” Andreas commanded, “stay below the smoke.”

  She slipped down and crawled the rest of the way. Very well, let her look to Benny; the stillness of the form told Andreas his friend was dead, but he put the thought aside. He went the opposite way, into the white living room, half walking, half crawling across the flokati rug, as far as the doorway into the study. Black fog filled that room, and there was no sound of activity, only the growing snap and sizzle of flames. Anyone in the rear of the house would be overcome by smoke already, and he was in no condition to help. He returned to the hall, the pungent reek beginning to burn his sinuses. Where was Matthew? His eyes drifted up the stairs. The air would be even worse up there, but there was no place left to search. He might last a few minutes. In any case, he could not face Alekos if he left without Matthew. Ana was now trying to drag Benny across the dining room.

  “Ana,” he shouted. “Leave him, get out of the house.”

  She seemed not to hear, and he realized that retrieving her would mean losing his chance at the second floor. He trusted in her survival instinct and started up, being careful of his feet, aware of how easy it would be to fall in his current condition. Halfway up, Andreas stopped suddenly as a strange form emerged from the gray mist above. Bent over, moving a careful step at a time. Matthew, with Fotis kicking and raging on his shoulder. The younger man stopped a few steps from his grandfather.

  “Papou. Thank God.”

  “Keep going, get out of the house.”

  “Don’t go up there.”

  “No, no. Keep going now.”

  “Andreou,” screamed Fotis, red-faced and bulging-eyed, grasping at his old comrade as he passed him. “Get the Mother. Mikalis would want you to save her. The bedroom. The Prince is there.” The rest was lost in a wave of painful coughing, and Matthew moved on down the stairs, one hand bleeding badly.

  Andreas looked up into the boiling maelstrom of smoke. Leave it. Let the fire do its work. There was no way out the back. The devil would come down these stairs, or not at all. No sooner had he thought it than another hacking cough sounded from above, and another form emerged from the smoke. Two legs with a square shape above them, white hands gripping the edges. Those eyes that Andreas had not seen in more than fifty years: dark, almond eyes on gold leaf, a maroon cowl of robe, rocking back and forth, moving down toward him, a painting with legs. Only gradually could Müller’s face be glimpsed above the frame, blue eyes squinting, just noticing Andreas below. He stopped, but there was no way to go but forward. The German was nearly paralyzed with coughing, but one hand disappeared into his jacket and reemerged holding a pistol. The blue eyes sized him up coldly. A loud shot rang out, and Andreas flinched.

  But the shot had come from behind, not in front, and a large hole had opened in the icon, just above the Mother of God’s eyes. Müller reeled back violently, and fell across the upper landing, swallowed by the smoke, the icon vanishing with him. Andreas turned around to see Ana below, both hands gripping Benny’s .45, eyes wide with disbelief. He looked up again but could make out nothing. Suddenly, his lungs could not pull in air, only heat, and he moved down the stairs with all possible speed. Ana seized him at the bottom, dropping the pistol. Tears streaked her sooty face and her expression was wild.

  “Matthew.”

  “He is already outside.”

  “Benny’s dead.”

  “I know, child, we must go.”

  “We can’t leave him here.”

  “We must. Quickly now, go.”

  They went as they had arrived, bent, stumbling, leaning heavily upon each other as they left the dying house.

  Fotis lay on a damp patch of grass at the edge of the driveway. Andreas sat down beside him while Ana rushed past them to where Matthew knelt on the gravel, heaving and spitting. The Snake’s body was slack, all tension gone, as if the cord of his life f
orce had been cut. Only the blinking eyes showed that there was anyone inside. There were black streaks of ash in Fotis’ hair, his left temple was bleeding, and there were bruises over the rest of his head. The thin, fragile limbs and gaunt face were the same as they had been at that troubling dinner a few weeks before, but the vibrant energy that had animated them then was utterly gone. He was not simply old but used up, dying. It might be tomorrow, thought Andreas, or a few months off, but it would be soon.

  “Well,” Fotis whispered.

  “It’s gone.”

  The eyes closed for several moments, then opened again, staring at the sky.

  “You killed him?”

  “No,” Andreas answered, bemused. “The girl did.”

  “The girl?” In different circumstances, Fotis might have laughed. The best he could manage now was a grimace.

  Behind them there was a roaring rush, windows shattered, and flames licked out of the empty frames. The entire house would be consumed shortly. Nothing would be left but the exterior stone wall of the ground floor. From where they sat the two old men could feel the heat.

  “You’ve killed me also,” Fotis continued. “All of you. You’ve taken what I needed to live. For what? To feed it to the flames? Better it should be destroyed than I should have it?” There was bitterness in his words, but little heat. “You’ve killed me.”

  The words made Andreas tired. He could not expect wisdom or peace to come to his friend so near the end, but still it made him sad. It was a painting, nothing more. Pigment on wood, no pumping heart, no ageless spirit, no soul. He had held it himself, and he knew. They were all mad.

  “You are dying from the inside, Foti. No one can help you.”

  “You can help me. You can finish the job. You are the one who showed me the icon, made it necessary to my life. Then took it from me, twice. I do not understand why you have worked so hard to destroy me, but at least finish it.”