The Lost Throne paj-7

by Chris Kuzneski

  His curiosity piqued, Payne clicked on the link and was redirected to another website. The moment the page opened, his eyes widened in surprise. Two images filled the screen. The same picture as before, plus a different one showing the back of the coin. In it, the bearded man was now seated on an elaborate throne. He clutched a scepter in his left hand and held a winged female in his right. She was roughly one-sixth of his size.

  Underneath the photograph, the caption read:

  Statue of Zeus at Olympia

  Seven Wonders of the Ancient World

  Payne moved his cursor over the text and realized there was another link, one that would take him to a detailed description of the statue. Suddenly, the coin didn’t matter. Only the statue did.

  With the click of a button, details filled the screen.

  The Statue of Zeus was made by Phidias, a famous Greek sculptor whose art adorned the Parthenon, in 432 B.C. The chryselephantine statue-it was made of wood and overlaid with gold and ivory-had been housed in a massive stone temple at Olympia, the site of the original Olympic Games. Though Zeus was seated, the statue stood forty feet tall and filled the width of the great hall in which it was placed. His robe, sandals, and scepter were made of gold. An olive crown was sculpted on his head. The throne itself was made of cedarwood and ornamented with ivory, gold, and precious stones. To put its original value into perspective, a first-century historian had compared its worth to three hundred warships.

  As a graduate of the Naval Academy, Payne was staggered by that amount. He knew how important warships had been to ancient cultures and realized that if a single statue cost that much to build, then its modern-day value would be immeasurable. Simply put, it was the type of discovery that would have put Heinrich Schliemann or Richard Byrd on the front page of every newspaper around the globe. After all, it was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

  Unfortunately, Payne had no idea what had become of it.

  Had it been lost or destroyed? Or was it still standing in Greece?

  As far as he knew, the Great Pyramid of Giza was the only ancient wonder that still existed, but Payne wasn’t one hundred percent sure about that. To find out, he skipped ahead in the article. He spotted a section labeled “The Fate of Zeus” and began reading the report. A minute later, there was no doubt in his mind that he needed to tell Jones and Allison, who were still sorting through Byrd’s notes about the throne.

  Payne carried the laptop toward them. “Are you familiar with the Statue of Zeus?”

  “The one at Olympia?” Allison asked. “What about it?”

  “Zeus is sitting on a large throne covered with gold, ivory, and precious jewels. From top to bottom, the whole statue was forty feet tall.”

  “Unfortunately,” she said, “it was destroyed fifteen hundred years ago when the Temple of Zeus collapsed.”

  Payne shook his head. “Not according to this. Some scholars believe it was carried off to Constantinople, where it was housed in a new temple. Supposedly it was part of the Roman emperor’s plan to beautify his new city with the finest relics of Greece and Rome.”

  Jones crinkled his forehead. “Really?”

  “But it doesn’t end there. Some experts believe the statue was moved once again, prior to the great fires that engulfed the city in the sixth century A.D. In fact, many of the most valuable relics were thought to have been removed before the fires were set by rioters.”

  Jones pointed at the computer. “Let me see that.”

  He quickly scanned the article, which was featured on a reputable website, then leaned back in thought. Allison took the opportunity to grab the computer and read the story as well. When she was done, she had the same reaction as Jones. She sat back and said nothing.

  Silence filled the suite. For an entire minute, nobody spoke.

  Payne stared at them and grinned. He knew what they were thinking.

  Heinrich Schliemann had found the Statue of Zeus, and he died before he could recover it.

  Jones was the first one to speak. He glanced at Allison and said, “Let the record show that I told Jon to search the Internet. I expect to be given full credit in your thesis.”

  She laughed. “Screw my thesis. If we find this statue, I can buy a college and give myself a doctorate.”

  Payne smiled at both comments. “So what do you think? Could this have been the throne that Schliemann was talking about?”

  “Yes,” she said, turning serious. “I mean, if anyone had inside information about a treasure in Turkey, it would have been Heinrich Schliemann. After all, he discovered the city of Troy on Turkish soil, so he would have heard rumors about any artifacts near Constantinople. In fact, he and his wife spent a lot of time in that city.”

  “But if he knew about the statue, why didn’t he get it?”

  “Why? Because there’s a big difference between knowing about a treasure and actually acquiring it. According to his journals, Schliemann took nearly a decade to locate Troy even though he used Homer’s epic poems like a road map. Now imagine trying to find something that was moved from place to place over fifteen hundred years ago. That search would take a very long time. Especially with the interference he was bound to face.”

  Jones asked, “What type of interference?”

  “Even though the citizens of Turkey loved him, the Turkish government did not. As I mentioned last night, he smuggled Priam’s Treasure out of their country, which upset all the officials who had given him permission to dig. Over time, he eventually smoothed things over, and they let him back into Turkey to do further excavations at Troy. Only this time, they assigned a guard to follow him. In fact, every time he went to Turkey from that point forward, he was followed around the clock.”

  Jones nodded in understanding. “Which would have prevented him from searching for the throne. He might have known where it was located, but he wasn’t able to recover it.”

  “Exactly. And Schliemann wasn’t the trusting type, so there’s no way he would have asked someone to do it for him. He had screwed over too many people in his life to trust anyone.”

  “Speaking of trust,” Payne said, “can we believe anything that Schliemann said? So far, you’ve painted a pretty negative picture of the guy. Despite his genius, he was a known charlatan, a con man of the highest degree. Isn’t it possible that he was making all of this up? Perhaps this was a big joke to him. A final cry for attention before he passed away.”

  Allison considered his comment. The thought had crossed her mind, too.

  “Normally, I’d agree with you. I’d say this had the makings of a wild-goose chase. But the more I read Richard’s notebook, the more confident I became that Schliemann wasn’t conscious when he talked about the throne. At least that’s what the police officer claimed in his journal. And if that’s the case, the odds of Schliemann lying were pretty slim. He was an amazing man and all, but I don’t think he was capable of making stuff up while he was in a coma.”

  Payne smiled. “You’re probably right.”

  Allison smiled as well. Then slowly but surely her expression turned into a frown, as if the weight of the world was Suddenly, on her shoulders.

  “What is it?” Payne wondered.

  She took a moment to answer. “We aren’t the only ones who think Schliemann found the throne. Obviously, Richard believed it as well.”

  Payne corrected her. “Make that two people. Richard and the person who had him killed.”

  56

  WEDNESDAY, MAY 21

  Saint Petersburg, Russia

  The process took a lot longer than they had hoped. In fact, it chewed up half the night.

  Allison read the police officer’s journal aloud, sounding out the words phonetically, while Jones used a translation program from the Internet to determine what language was being spoken. Then, after a healthy debate, the two of them decided what Schliemann had said.

  It wasn’t an exact science, and it was made even tougher by the evolution of language that had occurred du
ring the past century. But by the time they reached the end of the journal, they were satisfied with the results. Although the translated passages couldn’t be read smoothly-the officer had skipped far too many words for them to reconstruct complete sentences-enough clues had been uncovered to assure them that they were on the right track.

  While this was going on, Payne left the Palace Hotel to work on another project. He realized he wouldn’t be much help during the translation process. If anything, another voice would have slowed them down. Besides, his skills were much more useful on the streets of Saint Petersburg. Their meeting with Ivan Borodin was scheduled for ten o’clock, and he wanted to survey the residence to make sure they weren’t walking into a trap.

  At first glance, everything appeared fine, but he would check again in the morning.

  When Payne returned to the suite, he felt a palpable buzz in the air, as if Jones and Allison had important news and they couldn’t wait to share it. For some reason it made him think of his dad-the moment when his father would come home from work and a five-year-old Payne would run into his arms and tell him about all the things that had happened that day. Now the roles were reversed. Payne walked through the door and was greeted by a burst of enthusiasm.

  “Get over here,” Jones said excitedly. “We just finished the translations.”

  They were still sitting in the same chairs as before. Most of Byrd’s documents were now on the floor. The only things that remained on the table were the officer’s journal, Byrd’s legal tablet, the computer, and the notebook filled with their work. The top page was divided into three columns, and those columns were filled with words in different-colored ink. Payne wasn’t sure where they’d got the colored pens from, but he assumed they belonged to Allison. She seemed like the type of person who would carry office supplies in her purse.

  Jones handed him their notebook. “We translated the entire journal.”

  “The entire thing?”

  He nodded. “Tell me what jumps out at you.”

  “The dumb-ass grin on your face. I’m guessing you’re pleased with the results.”

  “Just look at the damn notebook.”

  Payne smiled. “Okay, I’ll look at the damn notebook.”

  He scanned the blue list first, and many terms stood out. THRONE appeared several times, as did STATUE, ZEUS, OLYMPIA, and GOLD. All of them seemed to support their theory: Schliemann had been talking about the lost throne right before his death.

  Next, Payne moved on to the middle column. It was written in red ink. The words weren’t used as frequently as those in the first list, yet CONSTANTINOPLE, FIRE, TREASURES, BOOK, and CAVE were repeated. How they were connected, he wasn’t sure.

  The third list, written in green, was much shorter than the others. But it was the list that caught his eye: COAT was written at the top, then LOCATION, then KEY.

  “Tell me more about the green,” Payne said as he took a seat.

  Allison obliged. “Richard said the coat equals the key. Now we have linguistic proof of that. Schliemann mentioned coat and key on two different occasions.”

  “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 t
o 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.”