An Aegean Prophecy ak-3

by Jeffrey Siger

  Andreas wondered how many countless tourists and pilgrims over the centuries had wondered what Saint John saw from his place in this cave. Andreas crouched down between the two silver-collared niches and leaned over so his head was close to the ground in front of the fencing. Still clutching the cross in his right hand, he looked back toward the window. He saw sky. He stayed in that position for about a minute, thinking about nothing but what it must have been like. ‘Better get up,’ he said aloud, and pushed off from the floor with his free hand. He got up so quickly that for an instant he felt dizzy and stumbled back toward the cave wall. Instinctively, he reached out with his right hand to catch himself, driving the cross into the stone and dropping it to the floor in the process.

  Andreas resisted an immediate urge to curse. That’s all I need to do, commit the sacrilege of destroying a cross — in this place of all places and with a baby on the way. Lila would be a nervous wreck if she knew. He bowed his head. ‘God forgive me,’ he said and crossed himself three times. He picked up the cross from the cave floor and kissed it. He noticed that the bottom part of the longer leg gave way under the pressure of his lips. It had separated from the rest of the cross somewhere beneath the lanyard wrap.

  ‘I can’t believe I broke a cross in the Holy Cave of the Apocalypse. And not just any cross, the stolen cross of a holy man during the time of his funeral.’ This was something he never could tell Lila. Instinctively, he tried to fix it, get the longer leg back in place under the lanyard.

  Andreas knew he was standing in the place of Revelation, and perhaps that’s why he wasn’t so surprised when the thought hit him. He stopped trying to fix the cross. Instead, he slowly wiggled the longer leg, carefully separating it from the lanyard and glue, then with a firm tug, pulled it away from the rest of the cross. He looked at the broken piece, poked at it a couple times, and broke into a smile almost as wide as when Lila told him she was pregnant.

  ‘You wily old bas…’ Andreas didn’t finish his curse, but still crossed himself as he shouted, ‘It wasn’t just the envelope, you were trying to get him this!’ and held up to the light a tiny USB flash drive — a computer storage device small enough to conceal a million envelopes of information within the body of a hollow cross.

  9

  The funeral had ended over an hour before, but it took until now for the abbot to retreat from all those wanting his ear and escape to his office. He needed time to be alone with his thoughts. No such luck. Waiting for him in a chair across from his desk was Patmos’ police captain. He rose as the abbot entered but did not kiss his hand.

  ‘Your words touched everyone, Your Holiness.’

  ‘Thank you.’ He didn’t know whether to believe him but hoped he meant it. ‘Vassilis was a special soul. I tried to do him justice.’

  ‘I knew him practically all my life. He will be missed by everyone.’

  The abbot nodded. ‘So, what is on your mind?’ He knew there was something.

  ‘It’s that cop, Kaldis, from Athens. Someone saw him on the island during the funeral.’

  ‘I didn’t see him.’

  ‘No, that’s just it. He was on the island but not for the funeral, and left before it was over.’

  ‘Any idea why?’

  ‘No. I was hoping you might have one. You see, he and I didn’t get off on exactly the right foot, and I don’t want to give him any reason to be more… perturbed with me than he already is.’

  The abbot took the captain’s effort to avoid a harsher word as a sign of respect. ‘Why would you think I possibly could be cause for him being “perturbed” with you?’

  ‘I’m just asking if you can think of any possible reason that might be lurking out there.’ He waved his right hand in the air. ‘As farfetched as that may seem.’

  Now the abbot sensed the captain was patronizing him. His temper flared. ‘I think you forget who you’re talking to.’

  The captain shrugged. ‘Sorry, no offense intended, Your Holiness. But let’s be frank, your truly wonderful eulogy left out a few things. Like the fact Kalogeros Vassilis was murdered in the middle of our town square after ranting like a wild man for weeks about Russians trying to destroy the church.’

  The abbot’s face tightened. ‘How I chose to memorialize one of my monks is absolutely none of your concern.’

  The captain nodded. ‘True, but it makes me wonder if there might not be a few things you do know that could help with the investigation of his murder. And if you do, and Kaldis finds out you’ve been withholding them, I don’t want to be pushed up any higher on his shit list because of you.’ This time he made no effort to choose a gentler word.

  The abbot stared at him. ‘I am more concerned with how I am recorded in God’s book. If I have erred, my mistake will be judged by the Lord, not you.’

  The captain leaned over the desk. ‘I mean no disrespect, but if something goes wrong, don’t come to me this time looking for backup. If God is your judge, get his army to bail you out, not mine. If you’re hiding something, you’re not getting any further help from me. I stonewalled that cop once because you asked me to help keep the monastery from being drawn into a mess unnecessarily. Well, whatever mess is percolating out there is certainly not of my making, and if it’s yours or you’re making it yours for God knows what reason, good luck. Last chance, are you going to tell me what you’re hiding or not?’

  The abbot stood up. ‘ Kalo Paska, my son.’

  The captain stood up. ‘Then so be it. And Good Easter to you too, Your Holiness.’

  When Andreas walked into his office Kouros was sitting on the couch next to the window, reading.

  ‘Maggie finished the transcript. Interesting stuff. There’s a note-’

  ‘Can’t wait to see what’s on this.’ He held up the flash drive. ‘I found it inside that cheap cross Vassilis bought the day before his murder.’

  ‘Amazing. What’s on it?’

  ‘Don’t know. Didn’t dare do anything with it until one of our computer guys tells me if it’s booby-trapped to delete something if the wrong person tries accessing it. Maggie!’ He didn’t bother with the intercom.

  The door swung open before he’d reached the other side of his desk.

  ‘You rang?’

  ‘Get one of our computer geniuses up here. I need to know what’s on this flash drive, and tell him it might be tricky. Could be booby-trapped. And make sure it’s somebody with a top-level security clearance who can keep his mouth shut.’

  She nodded. ‘Right away. I assume that means your morning helicopter jaunt to Patmos was successful?’

  He nodded yes.

  ‘I’m glad to hear that. Anything else you need from me?’

  ‘Maggie, please, I’m in no mood to chit-chat. Just get that computer guru up here now. Please.’

  She didn’t seem the least bit offended at his brusqueness, just smiled and winked at Kouros as she closed the door behind her.

  Kouros burst out laughing.

  ‘What so funny? Doesn’t she get how important this is?’

  Kouros laughed again. ‘Oh, I’m sure she gets it, Chief, and — may I speak freely?’

  Andreas waved him to continue.

  ‘She’s got your number, too.’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

  Kouros leaned forward and slid a piece of paper across the desk toward Andreas. ‘This was clipped to the transcript.’ It was in Maggie’s handwriting:

  In case you’re interested, I know who the mystery man is on the tape. Just ask. I don’t dare put it in writing.

  Andreas stared at Kouros. ‘Why didn’t you tell me about this before?’

  He smiled. ‘I tried, but you cut me off, then launched into Maggie before either of us could tell you.’

  ‘Bastard, both of you are bastards. Maggie, get in here.’

  Five seconds later, ‘You rang again, master?’

  ‘Okay, okay, so shoot me. I apologize. I’m just wound up about that flash drive.’

&
nbsp; Maggie nodded. ‘I spoke to our resident computer whiz. He’s like a modern doctor, won’t make house calls. Said you’ll know if there’s a potential problem when access requires a password. Otherwise, just use it. If it’s password protected, you’ll have to bring the drive down to him because that’s where the equipment is that he needs to get around it.’

  Andreas let out a deep breath. ‘Thank you, Maggie, that was very efficient of you, as always.’

  ‘Keep going, I love it when you kiss my butt.’

  Kouros laughed again. Andreas shot him a glare, and Kouros laughed some more.

  Andreas put up his hands. ‘Enough already. I give up. Now, please, tell me who’s the other guy on the tape?’

  ‘Fine, just be patient, okay?’

  Andreas nodded. ‘Okay, promise.’

  She looked out the window. ‘I just pray he’s not a bad guy.’ She turned back to Andreas. ‘You know how interested I am in our church’s history.’

  Andreas nodded.

  ‘I don’t think I’ve missed a lecture in Athens on the subject in years, unless I’ve heard it before or know the speaker will bore me to death.’ She let out a deep breath.

  ‘One speaker in particular fascinated me. I never missed one of his lectures, even went to Thessaloniki twice to hear him. He didn’t speak very often, possibly once a year, at most. But he was mesmerizing.’ She nodded. ‘Yes, he’s your man.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘The name isn’t important, you won’t recognize it. It’s who he is that’s… mind-blowing.’ She paused. ‘The twenty principal monasteries on Mount Athos are ranked in a hierarchical order that cannot be changed. He’s from one of the five most senior monasteries. He must have been well liked and respected by his monastery because I remember at one lecture he was introduced as his monastery’s representative to the Holy Community.’

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Kouros.

  ‘Mount Athos is a self-governing monastic state within Greece, made up of twenty self-governing territories, each with a ruling monastery and each with a representative to the Holy Community, the governing body of Mount Athos. They’re monks who must be at least thirty years old, but usually much older, and well versed in church law and doctrine. They move from their monasteries to Karyas, Mount Athos’ capital, where they meet in the tenth-century Church of the Protaton, the oldest church on the Holy Mountain, and from what I hear, enjoy modern communications with the outside world and a pretty fancy lifestyle. At least for monks.’

  That explained the Italian suit, thought Andreas.

  ‘Anyway, he didn’t seem to be lecturing anywhere, and I was worried he might be ill or, God forbid, passed away.’ She crossed herself. ‘So, I went to a lecture by another representative and asked him if he knew what had happened to the other monk. You’d have thought I’d asked him to commit blasphemy. I thought it was because I was a woman, and that really pissed me off.’

  Pity the poor monk who did that, thought Andreas.

  ‘I called the head of police in Karyas and asked him to find out what happened to the monk. I couldn’t believe it. He knew, but wouldn’t tell me, either. I reminded him who I worked for and that unless he wanted to be reassigned to duty on a bread-and-water prison barge off the coast of Turkey in August, he’d better start talking.’

  ‘I didn’t know we had that sort of place,’ said Kouros.

  She smiled. ‘We don’t, but he got my point and told me what I wanted to know. The monk was alive and well, but in a position many on Mount Athos preferred playing down. A group of four monks, called the Holy Administration, serves as the executive committee of the Holy Community. One member of the group must come from one of the five senior monasteries, the other three from the remaining fifteen. He was one of the four overseers.’

  She paused and shut her eyes. ‘But he was more than just a member of the Holy Administration. He was from a senior monastery.’ Maggie opened her eyes. ‘And that made him protos, the head of it all. He’s their president, the most powerful churchman on Mount Athos.’

  Andreas picked up the flash drive and stared at it. He’d guessed right about the man being from the Holy Mountain, but never imagined that it was his mountain. ‘You know, Maggie, somehow I’m not as excited as I once was to learn what’s on this thing.’ He fluttered his lips. ‘But what the hell, what’s the worst that can happen?’

  He slid the drive into his computer’s USB port, hoping the answer to his question was not eternal damnation.

  The Protos wasn’t used to arriving home in secret. But Sergey was adamant. No one should see them arriving so early in the morning from the mainland. Karyas was a small village and gossip its primary pastime — especially among civilians working for the civil governor appointed by Greece’s ministry of foreign affairs and charged with supervising the area’s secular matters. It was their way of impressing co-workers back on the mainland that what they did really was important, even if they seemed to be living in the middle of nowhere.

  A simple, ‘It’s Easter Week and the Protos was away last night,’ would spawn endless speculation on his whereabouts, and perhaps a ‘My cousin Nick drives a taxi and thought he saw the Protos at the Athens airport,’ followed by more speculation over the reason for the trip at such a busy time. That was not the sort of gossip Sergey wanted to risk reaching the ears of nervous killers.

  By mid-morning they were back at the Protaton, in the Protos’ Church, a place of serenity and prayer. Yet the Protos’ thoughts were on its martyrs, for here a protos and monks loyal to him were slaughtered on orders of a ruler who had replaced Orthodoxy with another faith and sought retribution against that protos for denouncing his new faith as heresy. But that was in 1282, in a time of savage zealots murdering monks in the name of God.

  The words repeated through the Protos’ mind: ‘a time of savage zealots, murdering monks in the name of God.’ He shook his head and thought of Vassilis. Old friend, why did you get us into this?

  Three faces stared at the computer screen. Twenty-one faces stared back. Make that forty-two: twenty-one on each of two photographs. That was all Andreas, Kouros, and Maggie found on the flash drive. That and a few cryptic lines typed on a one-page document. The reluctant computer whiz that Andreas had Kouros ‘drag up here by his geek whatever’ had no better luck. He swore nothing else was on the drive and left.

  They’d been staring at the photographs for what seemed eternity, and must have read the words a hundred times. The document bore no sender or recipient, only two lines:

  THE END WILL COME AS A THIEF IN THE NIGHT.

  PREPARE, FOR THE TIME IS IN THEIR HANDS.

  ‘Okay, I get the “thief in the night” reference to Revelation,’ said Maggie. ‘No one knows when the end may come, so be prepared spiritually and morally for that moment, but the part about time being “in their hands” makes no sense. Eastern Orthodoxy doesn’t believe mortals can bring about or even anticipate the end.’

  Kouros smiled. ‘Sort of sounds like the answer I get every time I ask a Greek bureaucrat about the status of anything. “It will happen when it happens, it’s in God’s hands.”’

  Andreas laughed, Maggie stuck out her tongue.

  ‘So whose “hands” are we talking about?’ said Kouros. ‘It has to tie into the photographs; otherwise, why did he put it on the drive?’

  ‘Well, we know one of them is the Protos, so unless he’s a bad guy, it can’t be all of them.’ Andreas kept switching between the two photographs; each showed twenty-one clerics, identically posed in full regalia in three rows of seven, as if attending the same ceremony. The photographs looked to be taken at the same time, although in one a tiny oriental rug was centered at the feet of the clerics in the front row and an empty chair sat at the right end of each row. He shook his head. ‘There’s something not right about this.’ He brought the photos up onto the screen together, one above the other.

  ‘Look here.’ Andreas pointed his left index finger to the top photo, a
t the cleric on the left end of the bottom row, and his right index finger at the one in the same position in the bottom photo. Slowly, he moved his fingers across each row, cleric by cleric.

  ‘My God,’ said Maggie.

  ‘It’s the same bodies in each photograph,’ said Kouros.

  Andreas nodded and leaned back in his chair. ‘Someone spent a lot of time and care putting new heads on old bodies.’

  ‘But why?’ said Kouros.

  ‘The answer to that probably answers everything.’ Andreas leaned forward and stared at the photographs. ‘And why the three empty chairs and that carpet in one, but not the other? Were they added to the one or deleted from the other?’

  Silence.

  ‘Maggie, do you recognize any of them?’

  ‘A few. These are abbots from monasteries at Mount Athos.’ She pointed to five faces on the photograph without the empty chairs. ‘But I have no idea who the others are. Some men from my church might know; they’re regulars at Mount Athos.’

  Andreas gestured no. ‘Nobody but us can know about this. If there’s a message hidden in all this, and there must be, we can’t risk letting it out to the wrong people. And I have no goddamn idea who the wrong people are.’ He picked up a pencil.

  Maggie smiled. ‘Is this snap-and-throw time? You’re averaging two dozen a week.’

  Andreas put down the pencil. ‘Cute. Now would you please ask our computer guru which photo is the original?’ He pressed a button on the keyboard, pulled out the drive, and handed it to her. ‘And this time, you can take the drive to him. Just copy everything first.’

  ‘Will do. Bye-bye.’

  ‘Bye. So, what do we do now?’ asked Kouros.

  ‘Only thing I can think of is to ask the Protos if he sees anything in all this. After all, he’s in one of the photos and Vassilis was taking everything to him.’

  ‘Or so he says,’ said Kouros.

  Andreas nodded. ‘Good point. But I don’t see any other play, do you?’

  ‘No.’

  Andreas paused. ‘But first.’ He picked up the phone and dialed.