The Road Least Traveled

by Jerry Cole

  “Damn right I’d never go for it,” he said. “We moved one hundred yards in three weeks thanks to these jackasses, and now we’re finally on track and we’re having to stop for a bunch of vandals without any proof whatsoever? And you’re the one who’s caused that?”

  Greg suddenly had flashbacks to his first meeting with Petrou, and was reminded of the same disbelief he’d had for the revelation that the man sat across the table was the one who had caused the problems that had brought him to Greece in the first place.

  “Eddie,” said Greg quietly, but with firmness, “this country has a more fascinating history than we could ever imagine. And as much as we’d all just like to get the job done and leave, it’s not as easy as that.”

  “I want to get the job done and leave,” said Eddie. “My men want to get the job done and leave. In fact, everyone on this project has the same goal, apart from you. You’ve made deals with the enemy and you haven’t mentioned anything to me.”

  “It’s a couple of days that they’re going to have underground to take a look,” countered Greg. “They don’t have any of the equipment Betty does. They don’t have the drills we do. They are going to spend a little bit of time looking for something they think might be under there. You said yourself that you’d be happy if we found gold while we were under there. Maybe they’ll find gold.”

  “I don’t give a shit about gold,” snarled Eddie. “I give a shit about being away from my family for six weeks for a job that should have taken four. And for a boss I trusted not to fuck us over.”

  “I haven’t fucked you over,” said Greg. “And I resent that. But when we tunnel, we do so as a reputable company with an ethical responsibility toward the history of the country we’re in.” He thought back to Alex’s tale of the creation of Greece.

  “We’re just visitors here, Eddie,” he said. “We’re caretakers.”

  “That part arrives tomorrow,” said Eddie. His beer was still in its glass, untouched. Beads of water dripped down the sides and made a puddle around the base. “I’ll be taking it to the site and Howard’s guys will be fitting it. Once the safety checks have been redone, my guys are firing Betty up again. I don’t care if she takes a couple of nerds with brushes with her. They shouldn’t be down there anyway. If she tears ‘em up, it’ll be their own dumb fault for not heeding the warning signs.”

  He left his beer on the table and walked away. He stopped by his sun lounger only to pick up his room key and disappeared back into the hotel. Greg reached forward and drank Eddie’s beer. The idea of getting very, very drunk had suddenly become rather appealing.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  He only took a sip of the second glass of beer before placing it back down. No matter what he would have preferred, as the joint CEO of the company, his employees were always aware of his presence. By the pool, Eddie’s sudden departure from the table had not gone unnoticed, and while they could not make out what was being said, there was no doubt that Eddie’s voice had been raised. The team stared at Greg, who stared at the table in front of him. He rubbed his chin. There was two-day-old stubble beginning to form.

  He got up and tossed a few euros on the table for the beers and left the hotel without a word to his men. He needed to go to the site. He had to tell Alex that work was going to stop immediately and that they were to leave. He walked through Aristotelus square, past his own hotel, and up to Egnatia. As he had expected, there was no security on site. He marched up to the pit entrance and called the elevator, which clanged up to him. Taking a helmet from a hook, he got into the cage and sent it down under the ground.

  Once it was on the floor he slid open the door of the elevator and got out. He made his way down the tunnel and had gone only one hundred yards when he heard a shout. He looked up and saw Alex running toward him, waving his hands in the air. Suddenly Greg was hit with a sickening feeling. The tunnel must have collapsed onto them. They must have dug too far and crawled underneath the dirt, and it had come toppling down on the team. He sprinted towards Alex, but as he got nearer and nearer, he saw that instead of panic, there was only joy on the Greek man’s face.

  “Grigoris!” he yelled out, and as he met with Greg, he grabbed his legs and lifted him from the ground. “It’s there! We did it! We did it!” And he grabbed Greg’s face with two filthy hands, brought it to his own and kissed Greg passionately.

  Surprised by the last ten seconds, Greg had no idea how to respond. He pressed his hands against Alex chest to push him away, breathless. “Did what?” he gasped. “What did you find?”

  “It’s so beautiful I cannot put it into words,” said Alex. “It’s there. The palace. We’ve found it. I’m sure we’ve found it. Come! Come!” And he grabbed Greg by the hand and they began to run through the tunnel, and Alex must have been exhausted, having worked all the way through the night, but he ran even faster than Greg. Once they reached Betty, Alex swung himself up onto the platform and ran down the port side and Greg followed him. They ran the entire length of Betty in record time, and once through the control room, they jumped down into the space in front of the shield.

  The team was sitting on their haunches, drinking from bottles of water. When they saw Greg, they stood and cheered. They applauded, and came over to him, clapping him on the back and kissing his cheeks. He received hot, sweaty hugs from people he’d only laid eyes on briefly the previous night, and he shook hands with each member of the team in turn.

  “What’s going on here?” he asked. “Tell me what you’ve found.”

  “Come,” said Alex, dragging him forward again. “Come and be one of the first to witness this in thousands of years.”

  Greg could only do as he was told and held on to Alex’s hand. He saw a wall ahead of him, against which was propped a ladder. On the other side of the wall, he could see only the lamps, and they were focused on something, the thing that Greg imagined was the reason for the cacophony.

  He saw that rather than working from the ground of the tunnel, as they had been doing when he’d left, the team had instead switched tactics and had begun to dig from the very top. With ladders against the dirt, they had taken pitchforks and carved away chunks of soil and rock. From there they had created a space which they had gradually made larger and larger, until beyond the created wall was what appeared to be a room, the width of the tunnel.

  “Up the ladder,” urged Alex. “Go up the ladder, but do not jump down. Instead, just look. Look!”

  Once more Greg did as he was told, putting one foot in front of the other until he had climbed the seven feet or so that was the height of the wall. At the top, the light from the lamps was so bright he had to hold up his hand to prevent his eyes from hurting from the glare, but once he had adjusted to the brightness, he did what Alex had told him and looked down onto the floor.

  What he saw made him gasp. The floor was full of color. Bright, varied color in the form of tiny tiles, that when together, had created a masterpiece. He was looking at an ancient mosaic and the picture it made was that of a huge golden chariot, being pulled by six white horses. In the seat of the chariot sat a man with a white beard, and in his hand, he held a long, forked object with three prongs. A trident. Behind the chariot flew winged lions, and Greg couldn’t tell if the chariot was leading them, or running away from them. He had no idea what the picture meant, but he had never seen anything so stunningly beautiful.

  “Oh my God,” was all he could manage, and the team laughed together and applauded him once more. On top of the mosaic there were one or two members of the team kneeling, carefully brushing away more dirt, revealing even more of the picture, and pouring water over the dusty tiles, revealing their glorious hues. They looked up at Greg and grinned with joy. Greg heard a clatter behind him and saw that Alex had taken a second ladder and placed it next to Greg’s and he ascended it and stood by Greg against the wall, peering over it, and beaming so widely anyone would have thought he’d created the masterpiece himself.

  “This is Poseidon,”
said Alex. “He is the god of the sea. He is calling forth a storm, and all the animals are following him.”

  Greg couldn’t think of anything to say. There were no words for the sight before his eyes. “Where are we?” he asked. “What is this place? Did you find a body?”

  Alex grinned. “No, not yet,” he said. “This is the very first thing we have found. I believe it to be an outer courtyard of the house. There is no evidence that Betty has destroyed anything. I believe our maps were correct, and that you stopped Betty just in time. She has driven herself up to the courtyard of a palace. And I know of only one person who was said to have a palace at this point on the road of Egnatia.”

  “So, what now?” asked Greg. “You keep digging, underneath the mosaic?”

  Alex looked horrified. “Of course not,” he said. “At least, not straight away. We must preserve the site, firstly. We cannot even think about doing anything else until we have the assurance that nothing will be destroyed. This is a piece of art that is utterly priceless. But it will not be the only one. I can only dream of what lies beyond these walls.”

  “Alex, it’s beautiful, but you can’t dig anymore,” said Greg. “The team has to keep going. Eddie isn’t going to stop for anything. It wouldn’t matter if the floor here was made of gold.”

  “No,” said Alex, firmly. “We have evidence that we have found the lost palace of Thessaloniki. We have pictures that have already been emailed to the headquarters of the Greek archaeological society. They’re on their way, and they will be here any moment. This tunnel is no longer under the authority of TMD. Betty will not move another inch, Grigoris.”

  Looking at Greg’s face, Alex softened. “We couldn’t have done this without you,” he urged. “You have given the people of Greece a gift that was so close to being lost forever. You’re the reason for this discovery and we will never be able to repay you.”

  Greg stepped back down the ladder onto the ground, then turned around and walked toward Betty. He climbed up into the control room, went through the door and back down along the side until he reached the very end. This time, the walk was long. When he jumped down at the back of Betty and began to walk through the tunnel, toward the elevator, he heard Alex call after him, telling him to wait, but Greg kept on walking.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The media frenzy was so huge that it was safer for Greg to stay inside his hotel room. He turned off his cell phone and tablet, and locked them away in his suitcase, which he then put in the closet. He sat on the balcony with a bottle of water for over three hours, doing nothing but looking over the square, and then out over the sea, where its dark blue waves stretched on forever.

  The project was over. He’d had high hopes of conquering Europe, but he had failed. He’d been taken in by a man who’d seduced him for his own means. Greg Marsh felt foolish. And he hated that feeling. On arrival back at the hotel, he’d immediately booked a flight out of the city. It was due to leave at eleven that evening. It was only five in the afternoon. He had a long wait.

  His bag was packed and he considered taking a nap but knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep. He thought about calling Henry but didn’t know where to begin. Though it had been years since her death, Greg wanted his mom. Like a little boy, he wanted his mother to come and tell him that everything was going to be okay. Only that wasn’t going to happen. Even if she was still alive, and even if she was in the hotel with him, there was nothing she could say or do that would make any of it right.

  There was a tap at the door, and Greg got up from his chair wearily and went to open it. When he saw Alex on the other side, he began to close it again, but Alex stopped it with the palm of his hand.

  “Please,” he said. “Please let me come in and talk to you.”

  Greg stared at him, and then turned away, but left the door open. Alex walked into the room and closed the door after them. He was filthy, his shirt smeared with dirt and sweat. His face was streaked with soil and his hair was speckled with dust. He looked as though he’d been buried alive and only just rescued. He carried nothing with him. Greg was surprised that the hotel had even let him up in that kind of state, before deciding that Alex Petrou was able to talk anyone into anything.

  “Why did you just leave?” he asked gently, and Greg shrugged.

  “I’m done here,” he said. “My bag is packed. My plane ticket is waiting for me at the airport and I’m on the next flight out to Zurich. It leaves at eleven.”

  “I see,” said Alex. “And Betty?”

  “She’ll be dismantled and then shipped back to the U.S. in pieces,” said Greg. “It’ll take a while to get her into single parts again, but the guys have done it before. They don’t need me here for that.”

  “And me?” asked Alex. “What about me?”

  “You got what you wanted,” said Greg. “You got exactly what you wanted. You found the lost palace of Thessaloniki. You’ll probably find Alexander the Great buried in a vault underneath the palace, just like you said. You’ll get your names in all the history books, and you’ll be the Howard Carter of your generation.”

  “Sounds nice,” said Alex, and he walked towards Greg, and held out his hand, “but none of it will mean anything unless you’re here, by my side.”

  Greg snorted. “You’re kidding, right?” he asked. “You expect me to believe that? You never cared for me, Alex. You only cared about finding the palace. You let me get close to you, develop feelings for you, even, I don’t know, fall for you, and it was all just a ploy to get me to give you access to the site.”

  “No,” said Alex, and as Greg had ignored his hand, he reached forward, grabbed Greg’s shirt, and turned him around, leaving smears of dirt on the expensive white cotton.

  “I haven’t lied to you once,” said Alex. “I could never expect that you would give us that chance, but you did. And at that moment, I knew I was falling in love with you. Greg, you’re the most incredible, beautiful man I’ve ever known. The palace, yes, it means the world to me. But I truly mean this when I tell you that you mean even more.”

  “I can’t believe you,” said Greg. “I feel like I’m going crazy. Like this whole month has been a dream. And any minute now I’ll wake up in my bed back home in California and I’ll forget that any of this shit ever happened.”

  “Look at me and tell me that you don’t feel the same,” pleaded Alex. “You’ve just said you were falling for me. But Greg, I had already fallen for you. I… I love you.”

  He held Greg’s arms with his hands, looking deep into his eyes. He reached forward and kissed Greg softly, but Greg couldn’t return the kiss. His eyes filled with tears and he felt them, hot, running down his face.

  “Oh God, please don’t cry,” said Alex, who himself began to well up. “Please. This is a time for us to celebrate. Together. We make such a great team. And I love you. I know you feel the same way. Please tell me you feel the same way, Greg. Please don’t go home. Stay with me and we can love each other like no two people have ever loved before.”

  “I just want to go home,” Greg said, quietly, and he reached over to the nightstand for a tissue, and wiped his eyes. “I miss my home and my friends. I’m sure I’ve got a committee to face when I get back, and I won’t have a job much longer.”

  “So what?” asked Alex. “You’ll start your own company. What you’ve done here is wonderful. You’ve shown that you care about the people of this city. You cared for me. You thought about what would make me happy and you made it happen. Please don’t leave me. Don’t leave Thessaloniki.”

  And now Alex was crying, and pleading, but Greg couldn’t bear to hear it. He needed to get out, to get away from the hotel, the city, the country. He needed to get to the plane and let it carry him out of there as soon as possible. He looked at Alex, at his dirty, devastated face, and it broke his heart all over again, but his mind was made up. He walked to the closet, took out his suitcase and headed for the door.

  “I’m pleased for you,” he croaked, and it was
all he could manage. He left Alex in his hotel room, and took the elevator down to the lobby. At the reception desk, the woman may have noticed his tear-stained face and his clean white shirt with the dirty finger marks on the sleeves, but she said nothing.

  “We’re sorry that you’re leaving us, Mr. Marsh,” she said, as she calculated his final bill, printed it off and placed it in a black wallet, which she set in front of him. Greg didn’t bother to check the amount on the bill; instead he got his credit card out of his wallet and passed it to her, and she rang it through.

  “I trust you’ve had a pleasant stay?” she asked, but when it was clear that Greg was in no mood to make any kind of small talk, she finished with the bill, took his room key, and gave him a polite smile.

  Greg took the receipt and stuffed it into his pocket. “Could you get me a cab to the airport, please,” he asked, gruffly.

  “Certainly, Mr. Marsh,” she replied. “It would be my pleasure.” She dialed a number and spoke quickly into the telephone. Within less than a minute, a sleek silver car had pulled up in front of the building. Greg left the hotel without another word, and the driver took his suitcase and put it in the trunk. He got into the car, put his shades on and let the driver take him out of the city to the airport.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The flight home was hell. There were no delays, and the journey home was as smooth as it had been on his way out to Greece, but it seemed to last ten times longer. The first leg of the trek was spent in Thessaloniki airport, where Greg sat in a chair and stared blankly into space for hours, leaving his chair only to go to the bathroom and later to fetch a sandwich he didn’t even want to eat. He nibbled at the dry bread and left it almost whole in its package on the seat next to him. He bought a coffee but wanted to spit it out again. It was weak and so hot it burned his tongue, making his eyes water. At the bottom of the cup were granules that had not even dissolved despite the lava-like temperature, and in disgust, he threw the last third away.