‘Mostly jewellery. Our team’s only three men, so it’s an impossible task. That’s why I’m calling all archaeologists to help us out.’
‘Jewellery?’ My heart skipped a beat. ‘And you think the dealer’s in Crete?’
Pure coincidence, or could this be my lead at last?
‘Everything points that way, but so far we’ve drawn a blank.’
*
I could hardly sleep for the questions tumbling around in my head. Was this a connection to the dragonfly necklace? When I gave in to tiredness, I took myself back to dreams of Thira and her buried city on the island of Crete. My restless mind searched for clues that may lead me to a dealer and the dragonfly necklace. Clearly, Thira left the necklace in the temple at Santorini, where Tommy found it. But almost all their other treasures had gone, according to my dreams, to the Sacred City of Istron.
Never having been to Istron, I longed to investigate. If someone had discovered the site, then I suspected they found a wealth of artefacts, everything of value that the Atlanteans removed from Santorini.
I had to return to Greece and find the necklace. Undo the wrong I did. Then Tommy would find peace. The biggest disappointment in his life was that I betrayed his trust.
*
After breakfast, Irini attempted to mark homework books, despite Tommy having the TV volume on high and the rugby commentary blasting out. I was concentrating on my next article when Aaron phoned from Santorini.
‘A guy came looking for you, Bridget. He wanted your address but I wouldn’t give it. I said I’d contact you on his behalf.’
‘A man? What did he look like?’
‘A big guy, in his forties, Greek, good-looking, I guess. He said to send regards from someone called Splotskey.’
‘Splotskey! Are you sure?’ I cried.
Tommy’s head snapped up. ‘The cardiologist?’ he muttered. I saw him put two and two together – making five.
The man Aaron described was not Splotskey, but what was the connection? Thirty years had passed since I last saw Splotskey, but was this my lead?
‘I’m sure. Splotskey. I wrote it down,’ Aaron said. ‘He gave me his number and insists you call him.’
I jotted down the digits as Aaron recited them. If this was a dealer, which I suspected, then I had to meet him. He was too young to be Splotskey, or the man he dealt with, but obviously he knew something about what had happened all those years earlier.
‘Actually, I’m coming back over, Aaron,’ I said, making a snap decision. ‘I need some photos for my next article. Will you pick me up from the airport?’
Tommy and Irini were staring at me when I ended the call. I avoided their gaze, my mind searching for an explanation I could offer for my upcoming departure.
‘So it was Splotskey. I always wondered. And now you’re going back by yourself,’ Tommy said, glaring at me.
I nodded. ‘You would never let me explain, remember?’
‘Can I ask why now?’ he said, his tone brusque now and his eyes hard.
‘Something’s come up.’ I wanted to go over to him and explain, but the small room was filled with tension and we were like magnets on the same poles, so alike we were forced away from each other.
‘That’s all you’re going to tell us? I hope it’s not more of the same, Bridget!’ He glanced at Irini, as if to say: See what I have to put up with?
‘No, of course it’s not! Can’t you ever . . . Oh! Look, I don’t have a choice, Tommy.’
Irini stared down at her homework books, clearly not wanting to get involved, but she didn’t turn a page. After a few minutes of our bickering, she looked up.
‘Why can’t you stay, Mam?’ There was so much sadness in her voice. Then her eyes met mine. ‘I know it hasn’t been easy for us this last week, we’re set in our ways and it’s hard to change, but that doesn’t mean you have to leave. I’m involved with somebody. I might end up moving in with him soon, then you’ll have the place to yourselves.’
Momentarily side-tracked, Tommy turned his attention to Irini. ‘Who?’
Jason, one of my fellow teachers. I haven’t had a chance to tell you about him yet. We planned to take you out to dinner next week and break the news, you know, have a bit of a celebration. It would have been so nice. We got engaged just before you and Dad arrived here. He loves me.’
‘Don’t we all?’ Tommy said.
Irini looked glumly from him to me, and back again.
‘You’re not wearing a ring,’ I said.
‘Jason was going to do the formal thing: ask Dad’s permission in the restaurant, go down on one knee, propose, and slip the ring on. We had it all planned, even bought gifts for you and Dad. The perfect surprise. Silly, really.’ She sighed and stared at the floor. I felt her utter disappointment. ‘Anyway, Jason thinks it’s better if we keep quiet about it until he gets a position at the comprehensive. It’s frowned upon for anyone to get romantically involved at school.’
‘Oh, that old rule still going, is it?’ Tommy said, glancing at me.
‘I see,’ I said, ignoring Tommy’s quip. ‘I’m so sorry, sweetheart, I just have something to sort out in Santorini, then I’ll be back,’ I said.
‘Of course you will,’ Tommy mumbled with a tinge of sarcasm. ‘And you’re not going to tell us why, no explanation, just pack your bags and leave, is it?’
‘It’s about some antiquities that went missing,’ I said quietly.
‘Oh, that old chestnut,’ he snapped.
Irini was following our conversation. ‘What? I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said.
Tommy thrust his jaw forward and I realised he was going to share my darkest secret.
‘Nothing, Irini,’ I said quickly. ‘Just something that disappeared a long time ago.’
Tommy snorted. ‘That’s one way to put it.’
‘Why do you have to be so horrible all the while?’ My anger rose. ‘You’re a bitter and twisted old man, Tommy McGuire.’
‘Honestly!’ Irini shouted. ‘I don’t know why you two can’t talk to each other like normal, civilised human beings. If you hate each other so much, why have you stayed together all these years? All you do is snarl and snipe all day long. It’s been hell this past week!’
‘We stay together because of you, Irini, love,’ Tommy said, squinting at me. ‘We always hoped you would come back to live with us.’
‘If all this nastiness is because of me, I wish I’d never been born!’ She gathered up her exercise books and stomped upstairs.
‘Satisfied, Tommy?’ I said, pulling my magazine research into a pile and following her.
I tapped on Irini’s door, and when she didn’t answer, I stuck my head inside and said, ‘Can I come in?’ I sat on the bed next to her. ‘I’m sorry, Irini. I know how difficult it’s been for you.’
‘I don’t understand why you two are always fighting.’
I sighed. ‘It’s a long story.’
‘It might help if you shared it with me.’
‘I will, I promise. I’ll tell you everything as soon as I come back from Santorini. When I’ve put everything right.’ We sat in silence for a minute. ‘It will be easier all around if I’m out of the way.’
‘Do you really think that, Mam?’
‘I do. For now, at least. There are things I need to put right, in Greece. Do you understand? It’s something I have to do.’
‘I wish we could have been a normal family.’
‘Me too. Were you terribly unhappy at the convent?’
She took a moment to answer. ‘Not really. I loved getting your letters. Remember the donkey . . . the name I chose?’
I smiled sadly. ‘Ring-a-ding Rosie. She’s a grandmother now, and trots up and down to the port with her offspring every day. I always wondered if you got the letters, with you not replying.’
‘I tried, but I never knew what to say. If I won the lottery, I’d open a donkey sanctuary on Santorini.’
I smiled. ‘Will
you come and visit me if this takes longer than I expect?’
‘Do you want me to?’
‘Nothing would please me more.’ I pushed her hair back and kissed her cheek. ‘You have no idea how much I love you, Irini. But one day you’ll understand.’
Her sad eyes looked into mine, and although she didn’t speak, I knew exactly what she was thinking: Then why did you dump me in the convent when I was a little girl?
‘Like I said, I’ll tell you everything when I’m sorted.’
Again, I got that questioning look, and felt my heart breaking.
Three days later, I left for Santorini.
*
After landing at Athens, I boarded the small prop-engine island hopper. The Olympic plane was packed, but I had a window seat. My neighbour poked around the armrest for a phone charger.
‘My battery’s flat,’ he said, as if running out of oxygen.
‘I doubt you can charge it on here.’
Like most youths, he couldn’t travel without his personal noise. He had noticed me at Dublin airport and introduced himself as Nathan Scott. We buckled up and he chatted throughout the forty-minute flight. As we started descending for the airport, he leaned across to peer out of my window.
‘Look, that’s Santorini. Can you believe you might be looking at all that remains of Atlantis?’
‘Do you really think so, Nathan?’ I smiled to myself, playing along. What were the chances of sitting next to another person who shared my love of that myth?
‘Quite possibly, and a lot of very learned people seem to think so too.’
‘I thought Atlantis lay in the Atlantic and that’s how it got its name?’
‘A slip-up by old Plato. He might have been a great storyteller and poet, but he would have flunked maths. One nought too many had generations of archaeologists, scientists, and historians way off-track. Unless he had a great sense of humour and did it on purpose. You know the sort of thing?’
I shook my head, glad to have my thoughts distracted from Tommy and Irini.
‘Come on. You arrive in a strange city, you ask where the bank is. Some local sends you half a mile in the wrong direction and laughs all the way home.’ Nathan grinned again. ‘A bit of a wag, our Plato, don’t you think?’
‘From up here, it’s a bit hard to imagine that scrap of an island as Atlantis,’ I said over my shoulder as we peered out of the window.
‘Ah, well, that’s just the tip of the mountain. Before, an entire country surrounded the bit you see now; a huge island it was before it fell into the sea. The largest volcano in all of man’s existence. Changed the Nile Delta. And you know the ten plagues of Egypt, from the Bible?’
‘You’re not saying they were caused by that scrap of land?’ I loved the passion in his voice, and it reminded me of Aaron when he was a student.
‘Exactly that. The pollution, darkness, strange wildlife behaviour. The whole eruption would have played havoc with the environment.’
I thought I talked too much, but Nathan never shut up. I smiled at his effervescent enthusiasm.
‘And think about this: old Moses must have laughed his holy socks off when the Red Sea was drawn back by the tsunami. He and the Israelites picked up their robes, legged it across the seabed and, just when Pharaoh’s mob almost caught them, along came the big wave and wiped them off the face of the earth.’ He laughed at the thought. ‘Moses one, Pharaoh nil – match declared a wash-out.’
‘A tsunami, like the one in Japan?’
‘More like the one in Greenland, twenty-seventeen. That was three hundred feet high, but this one, the biggest wave man ever saw, was perhaps around six hundred feet high. Some scientists say, when it hit Crete, it could still have been over three hundred feet tall. Imagine that!’
‘Amazing,’ I said, wanting to challenge him. ‘But going back to the ten plagues of Egypt, what about the death of the first-born? Impossible to put that down to a volcano, miles away.’
‘Not at all. Traditionally, the first male Egyptian child slept on the floor, next to the door of the dwelling, growing up as protector of the family. Poisonous gases are heavier than air, so he would have been overcome first.’
‘You have an answer for everything.’
‘I’m an archaeologist.’
I blinked at him. He looked about eighteen. He lowered his eyes. ‘At least, I will be in three years’ time. I’m on a student exchange: three months at the archaeological site here, and some poor sucker gets three months peat-prodding in damp old Dublin.’
‘Ah, I see,’ I said as we taxied to the terminal. ‘Then I’ll see you at work in a day or two.’
He blinked at me. ‘You work there too?’
I offered my hand. ‘Bridget McGuire. It’s been lovely listening to you, Nathan Scott.’
‘You . . . you’re Bridget McGuire . . . the archaeologist?’ His mouth fell open, which rendered him silent for a precious moment, then in a rush he said, ‘I’m a great admirer, honestly. I’ve read all your articles. Holy shite, I can’t believe it – Bridget McGuire. Wait till I tell my tutor!’
*
I stepped off the plane at Santorini airport and, despite the daunting task ahead of me, a huge weight lifted from my shoulders. Instantly, I felt ten years younger, fitter, and energised. The sun blazed down. Tourists chatted excitedly, colours zinged with life, and the air made me feel clean as peppermint toothpaste.
I had arrived home.
Aaron was waiting outside the terminal. ‘Ready?’ he cried through the pick-up window.
‘Do you think we could just sit here and have an ice-cold frappé for five minutes? I’d like to savour the moment.’
‘Sure!’ He laughed and clambered out of the vehicle.
We sat in the shade with our iced coffees and exchanged pleasantries, until he said, ‘How’s Tommy really?’
‘It’s been difficult, to be honest.’ Aaron looked away, making it easier. ‘Things have been strained between us. There’s some stuff you don’t know, Aaron. I’ve come back to sort it out.’
‘I realised something was wrong. I love the pair of you, but it became clear you were both a bit tense. Tell me about it when you’re ready, okay?’
I nodded. ‘What about this guy that came looking for me?’
‘He was obviously wealthy. Not your usual touristy historian or archaeology hobbyist. I don’t know, I felt a little suspicious, uneasy, like. He asked about the site, and my book, and wanted to know when you would be back. Who’s this Splotskey? I’ve never heard the name before.’
I shrugged and shook my head, but I think he suspected I was hiding something.
‘Right, I’m done,’ I said, putting my glass down. ‘Can’t wait to get home!’
‘Pick up a couple of gyros on the way?’
‘Sounds perfect!’
*
Oh, the joy of our little house. Although I’d only been away a week, it felt like much longer. All my memories came rushing back. Ten ecstatic years before Irini was born, and even the five years after, apart from my nightmares. Our lovely neighbours, the amazing view, and the archaeology site to look forward to. Aaron had been that morning and put a few supplies in the fridge.
I pulled the table near to the edge of the patio and enjoyed my food and wine while watching the sunset scene unfold. The donkeys wearily clopped up the steps. I thought of Irini and looked out for Ring-a-ding Rosie’s offspring, sadly wondering if my daughter would ever come back to Santorini. That would be one of the greatest days of my life. I longed to stand on this patio and hold her in my arms. Just the thought made me emotional.
Once I had told her everything, we could embark on a normal mother-daughter relationship.
Everything was going to change with Tommy too, once I had the dragonfly necklace back. He would forgive me, and our old love would replace his corrosive bitterness.
The trip boats sailed out into the caldera, their sails turning gold as the sun descended. Nothing had changed.
&
nbsp; ‘Bridget! Bridget!’ Spiro and Anna came rushing to my side, hugging me, patting me, beaming widely. Anna brought a pan of egg-lemon soup and fresh bread that would feed me for a week. The aroma of succulent chicken and fresh lemons filled the house.
I poured them both a wine while Spiro told me his cousin, also a taxi driver, had seen Aaron pick me up at the airport. They told me all the local news.
Later, I lay in bed and wondered why I couldn’t be this happy with my husband and daughter. I longed to share my pleasure with them.
*
Harry came to Santorini and, over lunch, he told me of Interpol’s latest developments in their fight to stop antiquities theft. He suspected the man who came looking for me was part of a smuggling ring, or a dealer. We both knew that although this was highly organised crime, it wasn’t down to one group of people with a ‘Godfather’-type head.
‘So, if something was looted from, say, my site in Santorini, and passed on to somebody in Crete, how would I get it back?’ I asked.
He looked at me curiously. ‘Was it?’
‘It’s better if we talk hypothetically.’
Harry eyed me for a moment, I guess analysing the situation. ‘You have some chance if it was bought “legally” by a big, distant museum. USA, UK, or Australia. If you have records of its provenance, and photographs, then it’s a lengthy process, but we usually manage to get these things repatriated, and sometimes we succeed in several prosecutions too.’
‘But you’d think the great museums of the world would demand proof of legality; after all, their reputation depends on it.’
‘They do, but it’s not that simple. A series of people will each profit from an artefact as they handle it, but they don’t usually know where it came from, or where it’s going when it passes through their hands. They only specialise in one small part of the artefact’s journey.’
‘But would a reputable museum be fooled by forged legal documents?’
‘The import-export papers are usually genuine. Antiquities gain documents, which aid in making the object seem legitimate on the open market. These antiquities follow convoluted smuggling paths. For example, a looted statue from Syria might be trafficked to Hong Kong, then London, then the USA, before it is bought by a museum in Sydney. The criminals know what they’re doing. Each country has different import and export regulations, and, along the way, the right documents are gradually compiled – sometimes through bribery – to make the antiquity appear perfectly legal.’
Secrets of Santorini Page 28