The Icon

by Neil Olson

  Andreas looked to the two young people. Ana was attempting to bind Matthew’s hand with her scarf.

  “Send them away,” whispered Fotis, “so they will not see. Then put my body in the burning house. I am not brave enough to do it myself, Andreou. You must help me.”

  “No.”

  “And what if I tell you I killed your bastard brother.”

  “I would not believe you.”

  “I let him die, then. I was in the crypt, waiting for that fat Mavroudas.”

  “But he got out through the flames, instead. So the plan was yours.”

  “You knew that before now.”

  “Including burning the church.”

  “No, that was Mavroudas’ idea.”

  “But you went along. You agreed to it. Or else you would not have expected him to use the crypt for his escape.”

  “All right, then. I burned your brother’s church. I watched him come down the steps and fall at my feet, bleeding. And I did nothing. I left him to die. How does a brother punish that?”

  “There was nothing you could have done. The wounds were too serious. It was evil to leave him like that, but you did not kill him. Your sins are heavy enough without borrowing others.”

  “Andreou.” Fotis’ voice became pleading. “Cancer is a terrible death. And I have had these dreams. I am afraid to do what I should. You must help me.”

  Nothing Andreas had just learned surprised him, yet it struck deeply. He had not wanted it to be true, had buried it in his heart, fastened upon the hunt for Müller as a means of leading himself away from the truth. His connection with Fotis could not survive this news. He had lost his friend already. And he could imagine no worse judgment than that which nature had already decreed. There was nothing for him to do.

  “My punishment for Mikalis,” he said, gripping his old friend’s shoulder for the last time as he pulled himself to his feet,

  “is to let you live.”

  Andreas wandered over toward the younger people, hesitant to invade their intimacy, yet needing to speak to them. Sirens could be heard now, still far distant. A fragment from his dream, or memory, or whatever it had been, came back to the old man suddenly. Something he had not thought of in more than fifty years. He saw the icon there by the table near Kosta, the space between the two panels dug at with some tool. And then, after he had shot the boy, he noticed little scraps upon the table, paper-thin bits of beige cloth. And it had occurred to him that it was one of these which Kosta had placed upon his tongue to swallow with his wine. That last sacrament. He must tell Matthew, sometime. Or perhaps, in fact, he would not.

  There was another rushing boom, and part of the roof collapsed, sending gouts of red sparks high into the air. Andreas watched intently. Nothing could have survived in there, and yet he would sift the ashes until he found Müller’s bones. The icon would be only dust. There would be no evidence of its destruction. They would have to trust to logic. They would have to take it on faith.

  SUMMER 2000

  EPIROS, GREECE

  T he church of Katarini had been built over the ruins of its burned predecessor, and if he looked carefully, Matthew could see the places where the old stone met the new. He had been to this village and this church before, but not for years, and never with his grandfather’s unearthed memories, or the image of the lost Holy Mother, so clearly in his mind. According to the priest, the new construction followed the destroyed original closely, and Matthew tried hard to imagine the past still present in this place that was both at once. Was this the window that the andarte captain Elias had looked through for signs of his brother? Was this the same stone floor that had bruised the knees of his pious great-grandmother while she prayed, and her mother before, and so on for generations? Was this the patch of wall behind the altar where the Holy Mother was hidden for three years? Then abducted, rescued from fire, only to perish in fire in the end. Was fire its fate all along? Matthew was not a strong believer in fate, but he was withholding judgment on a number of such matters at present.

  The church was large for the village it dominated, but smaller than his imagination had made it, and sufficiently cluttered with the usual assortment of modern improvements to impede his experiment in conjuring up history. The priest flicked a switch behind him and the bright chandeliers, ubiquitous in any Greek church now, cleared every shadow of ghosts. The images in the iconostasis—John, wild and lean; Mary, gentle and sad; Christ dressed in the white robes and miter of a bishop—were expertly rendered, but without any age or mystery behind them. The nave was crowded with unadorned pews, where once there would have been only a few, for the old, while the rest of the congregation stood, for hours sometimes, swaying half asleep on their feet, drugged by incense and the priests’ chanting. There was a big clock on the church tower, donated by an American businessman—village time eradicated, forced into hiding in the hills and caves, or down in the crypt.

  The priest beckoned. Matthew followed him through the opening in the icon screen and around the altar to where a narrow passage ran back to the priest’s chambers. There was an almost invisible door in the wall of the passage.

  “You want to go down?” Father Isidoros asked.

  Matthew placed a palm on the wooden door. “Yes, I do.”

  He turned and looked to where his father stood by the altar. Alex’s hair had come back gray, still surprising Matthew every time he caught sight of it. Yet the leanness had vanished, and the older man carried himself with the upright posture and determined stride that had been his signature before the illness. He was trying to take an interest in the church for Matthew’s sake, but he kept looking at his watch, as if he had an appointment somewhere else.

  “Dad, we’re going into the crypt. Are you coming?”

  Alex shook his head.

  “No. I was down there once, years ago, that was enough. Enjoy yourself. I’d better find your mother.”

  “She can’t get lost in a village this size.”

  “Don’t underestimate her.”

  The priest unlatched the door, switched on an electric lantern hanging from a peg within, and started down the narrow steps. A cool draft struck Matthew’s face, a high, earthy smell, like a garden shed. He took a deep breath and started down.

  They had buried Fotis in a cemetery outside Ioannina. The old man had made the arrangements years before, so the logistics were not difficult for his executor, Matthew Spear. At one point it had seemed that only Matthew, his mother, and the priest would be at the graveside, but Alex had agreed to accompany them at the last moment, and Andreas had come up from Athens. He would not follow them on to the village, though. He had not been back to Katarini in decades and did not intend to see the place again. He was an Athenian now, and would die there.

  Ana had wanted to come with Matthew. Or she had offered, in any case—a significant gesture. The fire, the killings, the whole business of the icon had traumatized her deeply, and she’d needed a few weeks to be away from everything having to do with it, including him. Even once they had started to see each other again, del Carros, Benny Ezraki, and the Holy Mother of Katarini were off-limits for discussion. Fotis’ death had opened something in Matthew, had freed him of some burden. Responding either to that or to her own heavy therapy, Ana seemed to be coming out the other side of her grief as well. In spite of this, Matthew had been slow to take up her offer. Perhaps intuiting that he needed to do this alone, she made plans to go to Rome with her friend Edith instead. Now he felt the separation keenly, and wondered if he had not made a mistake.

  The bottom steps were deeply worn and polished by the passage of thousands. This was the old church. Father Isidoros moved slowly, holding the lantern up here and there. Matthew could feel the tightness of the chamber, the low ceiling, the narrow passages. So much history forced into this little space. There were fewer bones visible than he expected. The compartments mostly hid them, or maybe some had been moved elsewhere. Did they even use the ossuary anymore? In a far corner of the cham
ber, the priest stopped and looked back at Matthew.

  “Here, this place here, is your family.”

  The younger man glanced at the shelves, but there were almost no bones to see, and those there looked no different from any others. The conformity of death. Yet those yellow shards were his ancestors, maybe souls his grandfather had known in life, not so long ago.

  “There,” Isidoros continued, pointing to the ground, “is where your great-uncle Mikalis died.”

  Matthew knelt then and put his hand on the dusty floor, feeling around a bit, as if there might still be a warm spot where the body had lain. Nothing. If he sensed a presence here below, it was not to be found in any one place but was everywhere at once, in the very air. Nevertheless, he knelt upon that sad spot for many minutes, and finally the priest moved away and left him to his meditation. Prayer was no more available to him now than it had ever been, and seemed less necessary. He had nothing to ask, only a last task to perform.

  From his pocket he took the smooth jade beads that had spent so many hours in his godfather’s hands. What worries had they absorbed, what secrets? What penance could they do now for a man damned by his own conscience before death took him? What was the life of one priest in the weighty scale of Fotis’ sins? Mikalis had forgiven, or not, in his last moments, and nothing that Matthew did now mattered. He sighed. Such an evanescent faith was no faith at all. He squeezed the stones in his hand and thought of his grandfather. For Andreas? Could it be for him? But no, the old man would not care, the gesture would be lost upon him.

  A memento, then. Like flowers upon a grave. That would have to be good enough. Abandoned by the priest’s lantern, in darkness, Matthew placed the beads upon the stone floor and rose to his feet. A slight dizziness took him, and he leaned upon the cases of his ancestors’ bones to steady himself. The air down here was too thin for the living; they must go. He wandered back toward the entry, looking about the chamber once more, fixing it in his mind. He wondered if he would return, or whether this might be the last time that a Spyridis visited this ancestral space. Did it matter that the connection would perish with him? Surely the dead did not care either way.

  The priest waited for him by the stairs, and they went up. After the crypt, the newness of the upper church struck Matthew more forcefully. The Holy Mother could never have come back here; it would not have belonged. The thought of the vanished icon opened that dark, aching place within him, as it had done a hundred times already in the past three months. Yet each time with less force. Deep breaths steadied him; he turned his face away from the priest. He would mourn its loss for a long time, the rest of his life, but perhaps Father Ioannes had been right. Perhaps there was no place for such a sacred work in such a compromised world. Except a monastery. Yes, that was the answer. Metéora, Mount Athos, Saint Catherine’s in the Sinai. The world still did not know all the treasures hidden away in those places. The Holy Mother of Katarini would have been quite safe. Why had he and Ioannes not thought of that when they contemplated its fate? It hardly mattered now.

  The afternoon sun had gone behind the mountains when they emerged into the courtyard, and Matthew could feel the day’s heat dissipating, cool dusk coming on swiftly, as it did in these hills. Ana had given him the number of her hotel in Rome. She did not expect him to call, had encouraged him not to, in fact. But she had given him the number. Words were untrustworthy, false. The face spoke the truth. The eyes did not lie, if you knew how to read them. Remember her face, that day he had last seen her. What had it asked of him?

  Orange light bathed the top of the distant hill called Adelphos, little brother to the mountains behind it. He would have liked to climb that hill with his grandfather, but he would do it on his own. Find the caves, maybe grow a beard and change his name, live like an andarte or a mad hermit. Matthew smiled at the thought. He would settle for climbing the hill, but not today, not just now. Now he had to find a telephone.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My agent, Sloan Harris, provided countless insights into the troubles that beset earlier versions of this work, and proved himself the embodiment of patience, perseverance, and good humor. Dan Conaway, my editor, left no line unturned in his effort to make the novel all that it could be, and has a grasp of storytelling magic that is a gift to any writer. Jill Schwartzman, Kristin Ventry, Sandy Hodgman, and Liz Farrell have all gone above and beyond the call of duty.

  The many people whose close reads and thoughtful advice were invaluable include Katharine Cluverius, Jesse Dorris, Jake Morrissey, Mary Ann Naples, Marcia Olson, Rose Olson, and Olga Vezeris. I’m grateful to Cameron Olson for supplying critical information about military history, and to Sean Hemingway for a backstage look at the Metropolitan Museum. Vasili Andreopoulos’ memories of the German occupation of his village in Kozani were among the first inspirations for this work. And the support shown to all my writing endeavors by my entire family, including Brad, Laura, and Big Neil, has been faith-sustaining.

  I am deeply indebted to the works of countless authors, among them Helen C. Evans, Dan Hofstadter, John Lowden, John Julius Norwich, David Talbot Rice, Steven Runciman, C. M. Woodhouse, and especially Mark Mazower. Any errors or deliberate departures from fact for dramatic purposes are upon my head, of course.

  Greatest thanks and deepest love go to Caroline Sutton, who was my first reader, editor, sounding board, provider of names and colors, and comic relief—and who got me up at six o’clock every morning.

  About the Author

  Neil Olson, the grandson of Greek immigrants, works in the publishing industry and lives in New York City with his wife.

  www.iconthebook.com

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  Copyright

  THE ICON. Copyright © 2005 by Neil Olson. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, 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 hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of PerfectBound™.

  PerfectBound™ and the PerfectBound™ logo are trademarks of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

  Microsoft Reader April 2005 ISBN 0-06-079615-4

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Olson, Neil.

  The icon: a novel/by Neil Olson.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 0-06-074838-9

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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