by Joseph Badal
“After he covered me with a blanket and untied me from the bed, Christo helped Pericles get up from the floor. He put him in bed while I dressed. He used the telephone to call the hospital and the local policeman. He ordered the policeman to get two men he trusted and come to the taverna. When they arrived, Christo told them to take the two criminals to a spot in the forest and to hold them there until he joined them.
“Christo drove Pericles and me to the hospital in Vathi. He told the doctor there that two men had broken into our home and attacked my husband. He didn’t mention they had tried to rape me and he never said another word about the criminals.”
Marika paused.
“Were the two men put in prison?” John asked.
“I have no idea,” she said in a tone that indicated she couldn’t have cared less about what had happened to them. “I have heard rumors, but nothing certain. As far as the public is concerned, the men who beat up Pericles escaped. The story of the attack was in all the newspapers and the police received a lot of criticism for never bringing them to trial.”
“What about the rumors?”
“That is a completely other story. Some people say Christo returned to the location in the forest and joined the constable and his two deputies. From there they supposedly dragged the men to the edge of a cliff, castrated them, and tossed them into the sea.”
The shock of the ending must have shown on his face. Marika continued to clean up while she watched him. Her face was a stone mask. She seemed to be waiting for him to say something. When he couldn’t figure out anything appropriate to say, she said, “John, you have to understand that this is Greece, not the United States. The concept of an eye for an eye runs deep in our veins. And there is something I have not told you. Those two Englishmen were travelling on motorcycles. They had left a trail of victims behind them on two other islands before they arrived on Samos. They had already raped at least two women and had murdered one of the women’s husbands.
“A report had gone to the police station in Vathi that two foreigners had robbed a gas station and been seen travelling toward Mytilini on motorcycles. Christo had come here to investigate and had spotted the motorcycles parked outside. If he had not come here, Pericles and I could have been killed. And if the rumor about what happened to the two men is true, I could not be happier.”
John knew it would be unproductive to debate the concept of crime and appropriate punishment. The cultural void between Marika and him was too wide. But it still shocked him to hear a woman talk so calmly and unemotionally about revenge and violence. Castration and murder.
He just nodded his head when Marika asked, “Now you understand why we would do anything for Christo.”
MAY 2
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
After Zoë picked up John the next morning, he tried to discover what was on her mind, why she seemed so out of sorts about going to the police station to see the map. But she wouldn’t tell him her thoughts, other than to say, “First, I have to see it.”
He let a long moment pass and then asked, “How’s your family?”
“As you can imagine, my mother is very upset,” she said. “But she has plenty of support. My younger brother, Pavlos, who is in the Air Force, has taken a week’s leave, and my older brother Nick’s wife, Ariana, has been a saint. She cooks and cleans and holds my mother’s hand and never complains. But Nick is having a tough time. He worked day in and day out on the boat with our father. Every day he goes to work, he will feel my father’s absence. Inside he’s raging. He needs a target for his anger. With no known suspects, no arrests, all he can do is let it eat at him and let his anger grow.”
At the police station, John asked for Christo and learned he was in a meeting outside the building. The desk sergeant didn’t know when he would return.
They left the station and stopped on the sidewalk by the entrance.
“This may not be a good idea,” Zoë said. “What if those men are still here?”
“It’s daytime. What can happen?”
She made that hunched shouldered, open-palmed gesture so common to Mediterranean people. “All right, if you say so.”
John had second thoughts. He pointed at his head. “Even with the bandages gone, this lump and the bald spot where they shaved my scalp make me stand out.”
Zoë looked over John’s shoulder at something down the street. A mischievous look came over her face and she winked at John. “Wait here,” she said.
John watched Zoë fast-walk down the street. Two minutes later, she reappeared with a small paper bag. A minute later, she led a beret-clad, sunglassed John down the sidewalk. “Very rakish,” she said, giggling at the look on John’s face. “Don’t look so uncomfortable. You look like a French tourist. Oui, oui, tres chic,” she said.
John took Zoë’s arm in his and guided her across the street to the quay.
It was a beautiful, bright day with just a hint of a cool breeze that barely stirred the leaves of trees that lined the raised walkway between Vathi harbor and the city’s main street. The bay was calm and the morning sun glistened on the water’s surface. Shopkeepers moved displays out to the sidewalks and a few fishermen hawked their early-morning catch to local housewives.
Zoë asked, “Have you heard about the volta?”
“No, tell me about it.”
“The volta is the name given to the act of strolling along a seaside walkway at night. There are rules associated with it. Most evenings you will find entire families along here. They will never overtake a group in front of them, and when they pass a family going in the opposite direction for the first time they don’t acknowledge one another. The next time they pass one another they barely nod. But the third time they may stop to talk. I believe the custom is borrowed from the Italians who call it the passeggiata, and I think it has more to do with showing off new clothes than anything else.” She laughed. “The rules of the volta vary from island to island. In some places only the women take part, as though it’s their answer to the male-dominated kafeneios. The men have their coffee shops, the women the volta.”
“So,” John said, “if you and I had never met before, and one night we happened to walk toward one another along this promenade, I would have had to pass you by at least twice before we could talk?”
“That’s right! But you can be sure the first two times you passed I would have encouraged you with my eyes.” She smiled, batted her eyelashes at him, and coquettishly tossed her head.
“If I had seen you, I might have been afraid to talk to you and could have walked right past you even on the third pass,” John told her. “I’m really a very shy person, you know?” He turned away for a moment to hide his smile.
She looked up at him when he turned back to her. “Then I would have said something to you. After all, I’m a modern woman.”
“Wouldn’t your family have been horrified by your behavior? That’s scandalous behavior for a good Greek girl.”
“Of course,” she responded. “But they would have kept their mouths shut.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because they would have been glad I had finally found a man I liked—even a xenos. I’m thirty years old; a very old maid by Greek standards. No longer a girl. My family would have thought that only a foreigner would be silly enough to be interested in a woman so far past her prime.”
“Now that I think about it,” John said, barely suppressing a grin, “maybe I wouldn’t have stopped to talk with you after all. I’d probably keep my eyes open for someone younger—someone who hadn’t been on the shelf for so long.”
A look of mock anger crossed her face and just as suddenly disappeared. “You’re terrible.”
John smiled at her. He knew his face had reddened; he could feel the heat. “The truth is I’m nervous as hell,” he said. “I’ve been trying to figure out how to tell you that I’d like to get to kno
w you better. You know, after this”—he waved his hands in front of his chest in a gesture of frustration over not knowing exactly how to express himself—“this whole thing is over. I know this isn’t the right time to bring this up, what with your father’s death and all. I’m sorry, I . . . .”
Zoë gazed at John with her electric green eyes. She moved closer to him, stood on her tiptoes, and kissed his cheek. Then she wrapped her arms around his chest and hugged him. It was a hug that a friend would give a friend, not a lover’s hug, but it held promise for John and his heart seemed to soar.
She released him and stepped back. “My goodness, John,” she said, “you’re blushing.”
He placed his palms against his cheeks. “It appears so.” After a beat, he said, “I regret the circumstances of our meeting, but I’m very happy we did meet.”
“Sometimes good things come from bad experiences.”
“You know if we stand here much longer your reputation will be destroyed.”
She looked back at him and laughed softly, the sound that reminded him of wind chimes. “This is a very traditional island, John. I destroyed my reputation when I went to work in Athens. A good Greek girl does not move out of her parents’ home until she marries. So don’t worry about my reputation, worry about your own. I’m already a fallen woman in the eyes of my own people.”
“Maybe we’d better check to see if Christo is back,” he said.
They turned around and walked back up the promenade. When they arrived at a spot across from the station, John saw Christo drive up to the curb on the other side of the street. He looked very upset as he slammed his car door.
“Christo,” John called out. Then he and Zoë walked down from the quay to the street and crossed over. “What’s the matter?” John asked. “You look like someone just bit off a hunk of your posterior.”
“That’s exactly what happened,” he said, a chagrined look on his face. “The governor wanted to know what I had done about capturing the killers.” Then Christo’s complexion reddened. “What the hell are you doing in town?” He waved an arm around, looked left, then right, and continued, “The men who attacked you could have seen you wandering around Vathi like some damn tourist. They could be anywhere. You’re supposed to be in hiding.” He didn’t wait for a reply, but grabbed John’s arm, spun him around, and hurried him into the police building.
In his office, Panagoulakos cleared files off two chairs and tossed them toward a spot on the floor not already covered by documents. He slammed the office door closed. John was amazed the door’s glass window didn’t shatter.
Christo collapsed into his chair and sighed deeply. He cleared his throat. “Okay. Now tell me why you two are in Vathi. You must realize how dangerous it could be?”
“I want to see my father’s map,” Zoë said. “Maybe it will tell me something that could help you.”
Without a moment’s hesitation, Christo went to his file cabinet and unlocked the top drawer. He spread the map out across several piles of papers on his desk. Zoë turned pale. John assumed it was due to the dark splotches of dried blood on the paper. But she seemed to get past the bloodstains and studied the map’s few details. Then she carefully flipped it over and read the words on the back. John could see tears well in her eyes. She quickly blotted them away with her fingers and, after a moment, explained that her father used to teach his children with made-up rhymes that would help them remember their lessons. “But I don’t recall this one,” she said.
“Could the words have a double meaning?” John asked.
“I can’t think what that could be. Maybe my father was just being sentimental. Who knows?”
She breathed deeply and then asked Christo if he had a map of Samos and a ruler. He provided her with both. Zoë measured the distances between several sets of locations on the eastern side of the island. Then she carefully measured the distance between two of the circles on her father’s crudely drawn map. Back and forth, up and down the east coast of Samos, she took measurements on both maps, calculated differences in scale, and kept a tally of her results on a handy note pad. She kept up a steady stream of conversation with herself. Finally, after fifteen minutes, she drew a dot on the official Samos map.
She sat back in her chair, rubbed her face, and muttered something John couldn’t make out.
“What was that?” John asked.
Zoë removed her hands from her face and stared out at the sea through the office window. “I said, ‘Katapliktiko! Then to pistevo.’ ”
Christo responded with impatience. “What’s amazing? What don’t you believe?”
“I could be totally wrong,” she told him.
Then she turned to John. “Tell me again exactly what my father said to you before he died.”
“ ‘Boot’ and then ‘Map.’ He also spoke two words I didn’t understand at the time: ‘Pythagorio’ and ‘Evpalin.’ Finally, he said, ‘My family’ and ‘My life.’ ”
“Yes, yes. I understand,” she said impatiently as her hands moved in front of her face. “But, tell me what my father said to you in Greek, not in English. Don’t translate what he said. Say it in Greek.”
“The whole thing, or just his last few words?”
“Just what he said at the very end.”
“He said, ‘Ee zoë mou.’ ”
“John, you translated that as ‘My life,’ which, of course, is literally correct. But it also means ‘My Zoë.’ ” She pointed at her chest and said, “Me. You see, he wanted you to find his family, and me in particular.” She jumped to her feet as though she’d been shocked, moved around the cramped office, stepping over papers and avoiding chairs. “My career in archaeology grew out of my father’s interest in Greek history. He used to take my brothers and me to archaeological sites on Samos and other islands when we were just kids. He told us stories about our Greek ancestors. We explored Chios, Limnos, Lesbos, and many other islands. My brothers tired of the long trips in the small boat my father had back then and soon stopped going along on those excursions. But, for me, they continued to be adventures—explorations of Greece’s past—that became more enjoyable with each year.”
Christo broke into her story. “You’re killing me here, Zoë. What’s any of this got to do with the map?”
“Give me a minute,” she said. She paused for a moment, as though collecting her thoughts. “The trips with my father opened the ancient world for me. At an early age I made up my mind that my life’s work would have something to do with archaeology and history. I have seen the remains of some amazing architectural and engineering feats, many of which were accomplished with the most primitive tools and techniques. But the wonders of my home island are still the ones that fascinate me most.”
She paused again, took a deep breath.
“Christo, do you remember when you were a high school student on Samos and the teachers took you on field trips to ancient sites?”
“Sure,” he said. “The only thing I liked about those trips was sometimes Sophia Loutrakis and I could intentionally get lost together.”
“Sophia Loutrakis aside,” Zoë said, “what was your favorite site to visit?”
“Oh, that’s easy,” Christo said. “The tunnel through Mount Kastri—the Evpalini Tunnel.” He stopped and stared at Zoë. “I’ll be a son of a Turkish mule! The Evpalini Tunnel! That’s what your father referred to.”
“That’s right, Christo. And guess which ancient site was my favorite one to visit with my father.” She rewarded them with her sparkling smile. “He knew I was the one person who could decipher the circles on the map. I think I’ve done so; but, until we precisely match the fourth circle on my father’s map with a spot in the Aegean, we won’t be able to figure out what he really had in mind.”
“Where’s this tunnel?” John asked.
“Quite near Pythagorio. When my father said ‘Pythagorio,’ he t
ried to help you zero in on the area of Samos drawn on the map. His map could have depicted some part of almost any island in the Aegean. Without those words he spoke to you, John, the map would do his killers—or us—absolutely no good. So, you see they must have tried to force him to turn over the map and he resisted. That’s how he got shot. But he somehow escaped from them. He must have put some distance between himself and his killers. After all, he knew the streets of Samos a whole lot better than they probably did.”
“That makes sense,” Christo interjected. “We backtracked a trail of blood from where John found your father to a spot one hundred fifty meters away. It followed a path that wound through back streets and alleys.”
Zoë seemed to be thinking about Christo’s comment. “I know my calculations are rough, but I believe the first circle on my father’s map depicts the top of Mount Kastri. The second circle appears to lie directly on the site of the ancient mole—the old seawall in Pythagorio Harbor. By measuring the distance between those two circles on my father’s map, then measuring the distance between the peak of Mount Kastri and the mole on your official Samos map, I developed a scale for my father’s map. The third circle is over the Heraion—the site of the old temple. The only reason I can figure out why those three locations are shown on the map is that my father used them as reference points I might recognize. They form a perfect right triangle. If you draw a straight line through these two circles, Mount Kastri and the mole”—she laid the ruler along the line she’d drawn on the official Samos map—“it connects to this circle a little more than a half-mile out to sea, just beyond the entrance of Pythagorio Harbor. That fourth circle must be the key to something my father found.”
“And to something someone was prepared to murder him over,” John said.
“So where do we go from here?” Christo asked.
Zoë shrugged. “Have either of you ever scuba dived?”
Christo shook his head.