by Robert Brown
“OK. But don’t think I’m some sort of sexist pig because I have a bit of banter with the guys.”
“I don’t really care if you are. We have a job to do, and so far you haven’t been too insufferable. What I hate is people trying to push their ideas on you. One time a group of students tried to tell me the ancient Greeks were black.”
“Huh? That’s a new one.”
“New to you. That crap has been spreading for some time now.”
“How did you handle it?”
“I told them I’d get back to them later and set up an entire lecture about ethnicity in the ancient world. I told them about Greece, Rome, Egypt, and the sub-Saharan civilizations. I got the biggest pushback on Egypt. A lot of African Americans like to think they’re descended from the pharaohs.”
“I’ve heard that one.”
“It’s bullshit. Of course, African Americans come from West Africa, a whole continent away. France is closer to Egypt than Senegal is, but it would be ridiculous to say the French built the pyramids, right? I explained to them that their own ancestors had some incredibly rich civilizations, such as Timbuktu with its ancient university, and the Songhai Empire, and the Benin Empire with its fabulous bronzes. I explained that they were falling for an old white colonial mentality that ignored sub-Saharan civilizations and looked at Egypt as the only true ancient civilization in Africa, which it wasn’t.”
“How did they take that?”
“I nearly got fired. Ruined my chances for tenure for at least five years. And I had to delete my Twitter account to get rid of the haters.”
“Why am I not surprised?”
“When it comes to history, people don’t want facts. They want fable. They want a nice, neat story that makes them feel good about themselves. Ever noticed how school textbooks spend way more time on abolition and the civil rights movement than they do on slavery? Same thing.”
Heinrich nodded in appreciation. “So you’re fighting against that.”
“Yeah.”
“Nice. I have to say, I didn’t think this whole archaeology thing was anything more than an interesting pastime, but you’ve converted me. Anything that shows up the bullshitters for what they are is a worthy cause.”
Thalia chuckled. “You have a weird way of looking at the world.”
“I just see it as it is.”
“Because of your grandfather.”
Heinrich turned away. “Oh, fuck.”
“Sorry.”
“Montaine told you?”
“No, the Internet. I wanted to know whom I was dealing with. Researching you, it doesn’t take long before that comes up.”
“Wonderful.”
“You never Googled yourself?”
“I got better things to do.”
“But you have.”
Heinrich nodded. “That son of bitch just won’t go away.”
“No one’s going to judge you for what your grandfather did.”
“Says the woman who had to delete her Twitter account because she spoke about real history.”
Thalia paused, then said quietly, “Well, I don’t judge you.”
“I’m glad.”
“Well, not for that, anyway. I think you’re an overgrown child with a filthy mouth and a bad attitude, but you mean well most of the time. And I can’t judge you for your family. My uncle was part of the junta.”
“The what?”
“Back in 1967, there was a military coup in this country, led by a bunch of neo-fascist military officers. My uncle was one of them. They did it because a coalition of liberals and socialists was going to win the election. The CIA backed it. They got rid of the free press and jailed anyone who protested. A lot of political prisoners were tortured. Beatings, electric shocks. Women were raped with broom handles.”
“Damn.”
Thalia shook her head. “And my uncle was part of all that. Dear old Uncle Cyrus. When I was little he would put me on his back and go on all fours around the garden like a horse. Not twenty years before, he had been doing things like that.”
Heinrich ground his teeth. “Yeah. You look back on those memories and know it was all a lie. That great person in your life was evil incarnate. I tried to deny it for a while, pretending he had put it all behind him. It was a long time ago, after all, and he was such a nice guy to everyone. But I knew it wasn’t true. Little things he said, the way he pursed his lips when he saw some Orthodox Jew walk down the street. Being nice to your family and friends doesn’t make up for all those crimes.”
“And so you’re trying to help that boy.”
Heinrich tensed. “Well, yeah. You got your own crusade too.”
He hated how defensively that came out, but Thalia didn’t take it badly. “It’s not on us to make up for the crimes of our families. However, if it spurs us to do some good in the world, that can’t be a bad thing, right?”
For a moment Heinrich didn’t realize that she had asked that as a question, that she wanted an answer. He nodded, glanced over at her to see that she was staring at the road to avoid his gaze, and said, “Somebody’s got to be the good guy.”
“And girl,” Thalia said with a ghost of a smile.
Heinrich grinned. “I knew a politically correct academic was hiding in there somewhere.”
Thalia got a call. “Hello?” she said in Greek, then turned to Heinrich. “It’s Adonis. He wants to know what we’re doing.”
“Don’t tell him. We don’t want him to get into any more trouble than he already is.”
Thalia nodded.
There followed a long conversation in Greek. Because Heinrich could hear only one half of it, and could understand only about a third of that half, he had to ask what had happened once Thalia hung up.
“He’s off the case and on desk duty until further notice. He did have time to hear some things that might help us.”
“I thought we weren’t going to tell him we were still following those guys.”
“I didn’t. He hinted that he had figured it out for himself. Anyway, he said that Interpol is done questioning the dealers at the collectors’ fair and is satisfied they didn’t know they were trafficking in stolen goods. The paperwork looked real enough, as we already knew.”
“So a dead end.”
“Pretty much. All the artifacts were sold by some intermediary, an American, who has since disappeared. The police are looking for him.”
“Good luck with that.”
“Maybe they’ll find him. You don’t know.”
“These guys are too professional. What else does Adonis have for us?”
“Nothing. Oh, he said that he looked into the records and found quite a few ex-military who have joined gangs as enforcers. They got hit by the crisis as much as everyone else, and the gangs offered them a lot of money for their skills. Too many are at large to pinpoint any individual whom we have to look out for. Adonis is going to send us mug shots, but there are more than fifty of them and he says that the man you described isn’t among them. Looks like that guy doesn’t have a record.”
“Wonderful.” Heinrich sighed. “You still got that gun he gave you?”
“No.”
“So we’re going into this with one gun and might be facing a platoon of soldiers? Great. That’s just great.”
Thalia took her eyes off the road long enough to study him. “You want to quit?”
“No. Do you?”
“Hell, no.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Sparti lay nestled amid rugged, rocky hills dotted with bushes and small trees. It was a small, nondescript city with tidy streets, its low houses and shops looking a bit sleepy.
They took a slow drive past the Internet cafe that Biniam said the hacker had used. It was on a quiet, narrow street between a fruit seller and a dry cleaner’s. The sunlight bathing the street made it too bright to see much beyond the open door, and the window was filled with a display of mobile phones and cheap radios, so they couldn’t spot anyone inside.
/> “Shall we check it out?” Thalia asked.
“Later. Biniam will give us the head’s up if the hacker logs on from there.”
“Oh, yes. It will be so good to hear from him again.”
“Go easy on him. He’s had a hard life. Most of my friends are much more mature.”
“I’m sure they are,” she said in a tone that conveyed the opposite message.
They checked into a modest hotel, getting separate rooms.
“This town is too small,” Heinrich said. “Let’s stay off the streets until evening. I don’t want to get spotted.”
“Agreed. I know this place pretty well, so once it’s dark we can check out the most likely sites where they would be digging. There’s the site of ancient Sparta itself just outside of town. Then about four miles away, you get to those hills we saw coming in. Go up there and you get to Mistra, one of the greatest sites in the region. It’s the old regional capital of Morea, part of the Byzantine Empire. When the Turks took Constantinople in 1453, Morea hung on for a few years before the Turks took it.”
“Wait. But the Byzantine Empire was just the eastern half of the old Roman empire. The Germanic tribes took the west but not the east, so that means…”
“That Mistra was the last capital of the Roman Empire, yes.”
“Whoa. I wish I was here as a tourist and not a private investigator.”
Thalia beamed. “It’s an amazing place. It’s basically a ghost town with a lot of the buildings still standing. Some of the churches have incredible mosaics. A nunnery is still functioning on the site, so I don’t think the thieves would dare operate from there. More likely the Crusader castle at the top of the hill, which is far enough from the nunnery to avoid detection, or the site of Sparta.”
“But you said that’s just outside of town.”
“Behind an olive grove and a fence. Nobody would be walking around there at night unless they were up to no good. When are we going to call the local police?”
Heinrich tensed. He had been dreading that question.
“We can’t.”
“Why not? We know they’re accessing the database from that Internet cafe.”
“The only way Biniam knows that is because he hacked the database himself and put a bot in the programming to trace anyone making changes.”
This didn’t seem to faze Thalia at all. “Then he needs to find more evidence, enough that we can go to the police without mentioning what your friend discovered.”
Heinrich smiled. This woman sure was up for it. The more time he spent with her, the more he realized he was falling for her.
They stayed in their rooms until nightfall but heard no news from Biniam. Thalia figured the antiquities thieves would probably be active that night and catalog their finds the following day.
“Once it’s late, let’s check Sparta first, then the castle,” she said.
They waited until midnight, ordering a pizza for dinner so they didn’t have to leave their rooms, and then headed out.
Thalia was right; the site was barely a ten-minute walk from their hotel. They passed a main square in which, despite the late hour, a few bars and cafes were still open, then traveled through some quieter streets and past a large school before emerging into a broad field. After a brief look in either direction, Thalia led him into the field and out of sight of the street. The glow of the last streetlight was soon far behind them.
Heinrich felt uncomfortable being out there with no weapon. He hadn’t dared carry the gun through the streets of Sparti.
He had a flashback to when he was seventeen and had taken a girlfriend into Central Park in the middle of the night to make out. It had been a blindingly stupid thing to do. Central Park in the Eighties was a haven for every type of pusher, hooker, pervert, and addict New York City could offer, and it could offer a lot. Amazingly, though, they’d had their fun and gotten away without any trouble.
Heinrich smiled. Ah, the cluelessness and dumb luck of youth. Doesn’t work so well when you’re on the wrong side of forty. Damn, my arm stings like a motherfucker. Why do knife wounds hurt more than bullets?
They moved as silently as they could across the field, and through a wide grove of olive trees, taking care where they put their feet so they didn’t snap any twigs.
Emerging on the other side, Thalia stopped in the shade of one of the larger trees. Heinrich stood beside her. It was dark out there, with only meager starlight. Their position under the tree made them all but invisible. Heinrich saw little except another field, broken here and there by whitish stone, and what looked like a small, semicircular valley to their left.
They waited and listened. After several minutes, Thalia put her mouth close to Heinrich’s ear.
“This is the best part of the site to steal from. It’s out of the town’s view. The wealthy area is right in front of us. There were palaces here. To the left is the theater.”
Her breath was warm on his skin, and he felt a shiver go up his spine. It wasn’t a sexual thrill. While it would have been in any other situation, his reaction was due to the fact that he was seeing one of the places he had always dreamed about.
He loved ancient history, with its tales of battles and great heroes. It was one of the reasons he had taken up boxing—that and having a lot of aggression to work out. Uncle Otto had taught him to love literature—the Greek classics and the Old Norse sagas. Places like Sparta were engraved onto his imagination, and here he was standing right in front of it, and right near the first Classical theater he had ever seen in his life.
But he didn’t have time for sightseeing. Instead, he had to keep alert for any suspicious lights or sounds of movement.
None came. Occasionally, Heinrich checked his phone, covering it with his shirt so the light didn’t show. After an hour, he leaned in close to Thalia and whispered, “Where the hell are they?”
“Looks like we’re out of luck. Keep your eyes open. I want to check something.”
She moved off into the field. Heinrich followed. For a few minutes, she wandered seemingly at random, every now and then bending down and feeling the ground. Heinrich didn’t waste any words. He figured she knew what she was doing. What that was, he didn’t have a clue.
At last, she led him back to the olive grove.
“Just as I thought,” she whispered. “They’ve been digging at this spot.”
“I didn’t see any holes.”
“They filled them in. The earth was looser, though. I could feel it. They tried to mask it by putting grass and leaves over the spots, but I could still feel the difference.”
“Do you think they were here tonight?”
“Hard to tell. Those holes were filled in pretty recently, though. I suspect we either missed them or they didn’t come here tonight.”
“Want to wait here longer?” Heinrich asked.
“No. I have the proof I need. Plus, if they showed up, we wouldn’t be able to stop them anyway. I say that tomorrow we take a look at Mistra and that castle. I don’t want to go to the police until I know more. We don’t want them getting away this time.”
“All right.”
They returned to the hotel, both of them yawning after their long vigil in the olive grove. They agreed to go up to Mistra the next day, posing as tourists, and take a look around. Heinrich figured it would be safe. It was a tourist site and the antiquities thieves wouldn’t be operating in daylight. Thalia might find evidence of their nighttime activities, however.
Heinrich went into his room, locked the door, and fired up his laptop to check his email.
That’s when he got a bad surprise.
He saw a message marked “urgent” from the halfway house in Warsaw. Swearing, he checked it but all it said was to Skype immediately, no matter the hour.
When he did, the night monitor appeared on his screen, looking worried.
“Hello, Mr. Muller. Have you heard from Jan?”
“No. Why?”
“He’s run away.”
&n
bsp; “What?”
“It happened earlier this evening, right after dinner. We had been having some discipline problems with him. Another of the boys had been making fun of him because his parents never come to visit. Jan punched him. He broke his nose, Mr. Muller.”
That last part came out in an accusatory tone. Heinrich frowned. How was this his fault?
Oh, the boxing lessons. I did teach him how to throw a good right hook, didn’t I?
Jesus Christ, man. You really are a fuckup.
The monitor went on. “We told him he had lost all his privileges. That included television time, computer time, and modelling time.”
“Modelling time?”
“He was working on that airplane model you sent him. He’s already finished the other ones you sent. Normally we don’t like to stop such creative activities but Jan had to understand he was being punished.”
The reality of the situation dampened the good feeling Heinrich got from knowing the kid actually liked the model.
“Did he take his phone?” Heinrich asked.
“No. We keep those in the lockup. He took a bag with his clothes and toiletries, but nothing else.”
“So why aren’t you out looking for him?” Heinrich demanded.
“We don’t have the staff to spare. The police have been informed and Jan knows he can always come back.”
“Come back to a place where’s he’s always dealing with bullshit? That’s what he ran away from in the first place!”
The monitor maintained a soothing voice. “This is a common occurrence, Mr. Muller. Most of the boys come back within a few hours. Jan is familiar with these streets and—”
“And so he’ll be safe? You idiot! It’s going to make him think he can survive out there. There are all sorts of dangers. Gangs! Predators!”
“Calm down, Mr. Muller.”
“Calm down? Fuck you. You tell me I can’t see my kid and then this happens?”
“I think this conversation is over, Mr. Muller. Please inform us at once if Jan gets in touch. We will keep you informed. Goodbye.”
The screen went blank. Heinrich stared at it, stunned.
A soft rapping at the door snapped him out of it.
