The Lost Throne

by Chris Kuzneski

  “In what context?”

  “Unfortunately, context is rather difficult. The policeman did his best to record what Schliemann was saying, but he struggled a bit. Sometimes we couldn’t read his shorthand. Other times he mangled the words. Occasionally he drew long blank lines in his journal to indicate that something was being said that he couldn’t comprehend at all.”

  “And the different colors?”

  Jones answered. “That was our attempt to give the words some kind of framework. After a while, we noticed that Schliemann clustered the same words together over and over again. We weren’t able to reconstruct long passages—there were too many missing words—but we lumped certain words together. By doing so, we felt it added meaning.”

  “And what did Schliemann mean by coat and key?”

  “Both times he said coat and key, he also mentioned location. So we know those words are connected. Our best guess is still a coat of arms. We’re hoping it will point to a city or a specific family, thus revealing the location of the treasure. Or at the very least, another clue.”

  Payne studied the lists some more. “I only see two cities mentioned. And no names.”

  “Actually, we had some problems with proper nouns. Most translation programs have a limited number of words in their vocabularies. Common words like key and coat were easy to translate, because they are words that tourists might use. But names and locations were much harder for us. We lucked out on Olympia and Constantinople. The cop must have been familiar with them, because he actually wrote them in his journal.”

  “Speaking of Constantinople, how do the red words connect together?”

  He handed the notebook to Allison to refresh her memory. But she didn’t need to look at it. She had spent so much time with the words she knew them all by heart.

  “Three words—Constantinople, treasures, and fire—support the original story. Treasures were supposedly removed from the city before fires were set by rioters.”

  “What about the other red words?”

  “Schliemann mentioned them with the others, occasionally changing his word order. As for what he meant, we’re still unsure. At this point, any theory would be conjecture.”

  “Actually,” Jones admitted, “most of this is conjecture. I mean, we translated a century-old conversation, which had been spoken in more than a dozen languages and was then transcribed in Italian. The odds are pretty good we messed some stuff up.”

  Allison agreed. “He’s right. Errors are a distinct possibility. But that being said, if we were unsure about a word, we didn’t put it in one of our columns.” She slowly turned the pages and showed Payne everything that they had attempted to translate. There were far more words in their scrap heap than in their actual lists. “We’re pretty confident in what we showed you.”

  Payne nodded his approval. He considered it a minor miracle that they had been able to do all this work in a single night. It would have taken him a month, if he could have done it at all. “One question, though. Why didn’t Richard have coat or key in any of his columns?”

  “You know,” Jones said, “that bothered us, too. He wrote the coat equals the key at the bottom of a page, but we couldn’t find those two words anywhere in his translations.”

  “Any theories on why not?”

  Jones nodded. “One. And you’re not going to like it.”

  Payne leaned back in his chair. “Go on.”

  “We think maybe, just maybe, that Richard used his legal pad as his scratch pad. You know, to work things out before he transferred them to a different page. Kind of like we did.”

  “Sounds practical to me. So where’s his main page?”

  “We think there’s a chance that he had it on him when he was killed.”

  Payne groaned. “Why do you say that?”

  Jones glanced at Allison. “Go on. Tell him.”

  “Because Richard often carried a folded piece of paper in his shirt pocket. Depending on the color of his shirt, you could see it in there.”

  “But you never read it?”

  She shook her head. “Nope. I never read it, so it could have been anything.”

  “Still,” Payne said, “we have to assume the worst.”

  “Which is?”

  Jones answered the question. “All the work we just did is currently in the hands of the Russian police, and they’re trying to figure out what it all means.”

  “But that’s not all,” Payne stressed. “On the day that Richard was killed, he was scheduled to meet with Ivan Borodin. If Ivan’s phone number was on that paper, there’s a good chance the cops have called him and asked him about Richard’s death. And if that happened, there’s a damn good chance that Ivan called the cops and told them about us.”

  57

  Ouranoúpoli, Greece (4 miles west of Mount Athos)

  Nick Dial’s eyes sprang open in the darkness. He blinked a few times, trying to regain his bearings, before he realized where he was and what was happening. His cell phone was ringing on the nearby nightstand. Outside his window, the sun had not made an appearance. The only light in the hotel room was coming from the phone’s tiny screen.

  Dial tried to read the name on his caller ID, but drowsiness prevented it.

  “Hello?” he answered groggily.

  “Nick, it’s Henri.”

  There was no teasing or joking. Toulon’s voice was solemn.

  Dial sat up and rubbed his eyes. It was early in Greece but even earlier at Interpol Headquarters in France. “What’s wrong?”

  “The Spárti police just called. George Pappas and two other officers never returned from their fact-finding trip in the Taygetos Mountains. No one’s heard from them since they left yesterday afternoon.”

  A few seconds passed before the information sank in. “What do we know?”

  “Pappas is well respected in Spárti. He’s not a drinker or a hothead. He has a wife and family. He’s not the type of guy who would go on a bender and disappear for a few days. Plus, there were two other officers with him. One’s a ten-year vet, the other a rookie. What are the odds that they all ran off together?”

  Dial considered other variables, not ready to jump to any conclusions. “Any theories?”

  “Car problems are a possibility. Many of the villages are remote, and cell phone coverage is shaky at best. There is always a chance that they are stranded.”

  “But you don’t think so.”

  “A few hours I could understand. Twelve hours seems unlikely. Three officers should have been able to flag someone down in that time.”

  “What about a car wreck? Some of the roads near Metéora were pretty treacherous.”

  “That’s another possibility. But not a pleasant one.”

  Dial nodded as he pictured three cops bleeding at the bottom of a ravine. “Yet somehow I sense that’s better than foul play.”

  “Oui. This is true.”

  “What do the cops in Spárti think?”

  “They are hoping for stranded. They are preparing for something worse.”

  “Meaning?”

  Toulon explained. “The reason Pappas took two officers with him is because of the reputation of some of the local villagers. A few of them are known for their brutality, which is why Pappas suspected them in the first place.”

  “What are the cops planning?”

  “They are forming a search party, a mixture of police and soldiers from a nearby army base. At first light, they are going into the mountains. I am told they will be fully armed.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “They want to be prepared, just in case.”

  Dial swung his feet off the bed and onto the stone floor. It was cold and unforgiving, like the regret surging through his head. He was the one who had ordered Pappas to investigate the Spartans. If something had happened to him, the feelings of guilt would stick with Dial for a very long time.

  “Keep me posted, Henri. I want to know as soon as you know something.”

  “Not
a problem, Nick.”

  “One more thing. Please stress to the cops that Pappas was looking for the men responsible for the Metéora massacre. If they locate any suspects, it would be helpful if they brought them in alive.”

  Unfortunately, the police would not find anything of value in Little Sparta.

  Shortly after the young Spartans had finished killing Pappas, Manos, and Constantinou, Apollo ordered them to dispose of all the bodies on the other side of the valley, far away from any roads or trails. He knew the wolves that roamed the hills at night would feast on the dead cops long before a search party was assembled in Spárti.

  Meanwhile, Apollo and his men handled the evidence in the village. The blood puddles were covered with dirt and rocks. The murder weapons—more than fifteen in total—were cleaned and sharpened. And Pappas’s vehicle was used to transport several Spartans to Leonidi, a small town on the Aegean Sea, where they would launch the final phase of their mission.

  If everything went as planned, the Spartans would return home in a few days and continue living the way they had lived for more than two millennia.

  If not, they would die protecting their most treasured possession.

  The legacy of their ancestors.

  The Spartans’ mission had started several weeks earlier when a foreigner arrived at their village. Unlike the police, who only caused problems, this man wanted to solve one.

  Apollo wasn’t the trusting type, especially when it came to outsiders. After all, it was a traitorous Greek who had helped Xerxes and the invading Persian army to defeat the Spartans at the Battle of Thermopylae. But this foreigner seemed different. Although he spoke with a funny accent, he knew more about the history of the Spartans than any of the village elders. Plus he had in his possession the type of historical evidence that was tough for Apollo to ignore—an ancient document that was written long before any of the villagers were born.

  If his parchment was correct, a Greek holy man by the name of Cydonius had spent his life compiling the true history of Ancient Greece. Written in the second century B.C., the book used information from some of the best-known Athenian historians and orators—Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Plato, and Aristotle—and combined it with data from lesser-known historians from the other city-states. This helped to eliminate the pro-Athenian bias that has always slanted the modern view of Ancient Greece. By utilizing writers with different backgrounds, Cydonius was able to paint a more accurate picture of the events of that time.

  And according to the foreigner, the Spartans were portrayed in a negative light.

  They weren’t described as heroes. They were depicted as dim witted barbarians.

  Even their legendary stand at the Battle of Thermopylae was called into question.

  Obviously, the existence of such a book infuriated Apollo. His life and that of the village were based on a core of Spartan values in the same way some cultures are based on religion. Therefore, in his mind, anything that threatened his beliefs needed to be found and destroyed before it could do irreparable damage to the memory of his ancestors and his way of life.

  Thankfully, the foreigner had inside knowledge about the men who protected the book and several other relics from Ancient Greece. They were called the Brotherhood, and they met once a year at a secret location. Desperate to find these men, Apollo was willing to cut a deal. He would help the foreigner, and in return, he would be allowed to burn the book before it was made public.

  It was a win-win situation for both parties involved.

  As promised, the foreigner pointed the Spartans in the right direction. They stormed the gates of Holy Trinity and killed the members of the Brotherhood, one by one, until one of the monks finally cracked. Not only did the monk reveal the location of the secret tunnel that used to house the book but he also described where it had been moved several years before. It was now kept in the same place as all the other treasures that the Brotherhood had sworn to protect.

  To thank the monk for his helpful information, he was beheaded like all the others. Then their heads were stacked on the stone altar that used to hold the book. It was Apollo’s way of taunting his opponents, just as his ancestors had done in ancient times.

  Now that the Spartans knew where the book was kept, they were coming for it.

  And they dared anyone to get in their way.

  58

  Payne barely slept that night. His mind was far too busy to get any rest. By the time morning came, he had made a decision that affected them all. They would keep their meeting with Ivan Borodin, but they would push it forward one hour. That way, if Ivan had tipped off the police, they could slip away before the cops showed up.

  Payne had already scouted Ivan’s house. He was familiar with the surrounding streets. He knew the dead ends and the blind spots. He knew where the police would lie in wait, if they were waiting at all. It was a quiet neighborhood on the southern side of the city. The houses were small but well kept. Yards were virtually nonexistent. If the cavalry came charging in, they would know about it—especially if someone stayed outside and kept watch.

  That someone would be David Jones. He would remain in their car, which Payne rented at the crack of dawn using his fake passport, and monitor things from down the street. At the first sign of trouble, Jones would call Payne’s cell phone. He, in turn, would grab Allison, and they would slip out of the back of the house while Jones pulled around the corner to pick them up.

  It wasn’t a perfect plan. There were many variables that they couldn’t control. Yet Payne decided it was worth the risk. They had come this far. One more meeting wouldn’t kill them.

  At least, he hoped not.

  Payne and Allison got out of the car and walked half a block to Ivan’s house. Payne had a gun tucked in the back of his belt and carried a book bag filled with the cash from Richard’s safe. He had no idea what price had been negotiated by Richard, and Allison had failed to ask during her phone call with Ivan. If the item cost more than Payne was carrying, they were shit out of luck, because Payne wasn’t willing to have a second meeting. This would be a one-shot deal.

  “If it’s okay with you,” Payne said, “I’d like to do most of the talking.”

  Allison nodded her approval. “I think that would be best.”

  “We want to leave as soon as possible, so no long stories. Promise me: no long stories.”

  “I promise.”

  The nineteenth-century house was one story tall and made out of wood—it did not have aluminum siding, as they were used to seeing in America, but actual strips of wood. No paint covered the surface. Only a light sealant protected the planks, letting the natural color shine through.

  A stone path led them to the decorative front door. The top half was made of stained glass. Payne put his face against it and tried to see inside. The interior was spacious yet plain. As far as he could tell, the front room was devoid of people except for an old man who was sitting in a green chair. Payne watched him for a moment, then knocked on the door.

  Several seconds passed before the old man answered it.

  “Da?” he said, with a confused look on his face.

  “Mr. Borodin?”

  “Yes.”

  “My name is Jon. And this is Allison. We phoned you about Richard Byrd.”

  Ivan nodded and shifted his focus to Allison. He stared at her for a moment and then offered her a smile. “You are more beautiful than Richard said. Please, come in.”

  The comment caught her off guard. So much so that her cheeks turned pink as she entered the house. She wasn’t used to compliments from Byrd. And she certainly hadn’t expected to hear any from an eighty-eight-year-old Russian. But it was a nice surprise, one that put her at ease in an otherwise tense situation.

  “You are early,” Ivan said to Payne. “One hour early.”

  “We’re sorry about that. Our schedule got pushed forward because of an unforeseen event. We hope we’re not disturbing you.”

  “Disturbing me? What could you d
isturb?” He trudged back toward his living room. It was sparsely decorated with a couch, a coffee table, and a small bookcase. An oxygen tank and a plastic mask sat next to his favorite green chair. “I am a sick old man who rarely leaves his home. There is nothing for you to disturb but death.”

  He laughed loudly and immediately started coughing: deep, phlegm-filled coughs. As he sank into his chair, he grabbed the mask and placed it over his nose and mouth. After a few deep breaths, he signaled for Payne and Allison to sit on the couch across from him.

  “Are you all right?” she asked, concerned.

  Ivan shrugged as he lowered the mask. “Life is no fun when a man cannot laugh.”

  Neither Payne nor Allison said a word. They just waited for him to continue.

  “So,” Ivan said as he stared at them. “This event that changed your schedule, does it involve shooting at Peterhof ?”

  Payne instinctively tensed in his seat. Standing quickly, he reached behind him and put his hand on his gun while he scanned the room for danger.

  “Let’s go,” he said to Allison.

  “Relax,” Ivan said in a soothing tone. “You have nothing to fear. I am only one who knows you are here. Please, sit down.”

  Payne stared at Ivan, trying to gauge his honesty. Ivan returned his stare. Never blinking or looking away, he wanted to assure Payne that he was telling the truth.

  “You must remember,” Ivan explained, “I grew up in a Russia where we feared police. KGB would knock on door in middle of night and people would not return. Entire families would disappear in blink of eye. Events like these are not forgotten. Or forgiven.”

  Payne remained standing, still not satisfied. “When did the police call?”

  “Yesterday morning. Questions were asked, but I did not answer.”

  “What type of questions?”

  “If you sit, I will tell you, and not a moment before.”

  Admiring the old man’s spunk, Payne did as requested. But he sat on the edge of the couch, ready to spring at the first sign of trouble.