We eyed him warily. With the wrinkled tail of his shirt hanging out, I couldn’t tell if he was wearing his gun.
He paused and raised his wine bottle, wagging his finger at us. “I am not a man who goes to drinking by himself. No, comrades. I prefer the company—the companionship—of women. But the mountain makes me thirsty. Someone took my car. I have to walk…many miles…before I find another.”
He gestured toward the floor above. “This bar of yours. A thing like this should not be wasted. Long time I am waiting…”
The three of us backed away as he padded over and stood before the unconscious Damiana.
“Poor heart.” He gazed on her despondently. “I taught your feet my dances. Why did you not share them?”
We were all too aware of his unabashed mendacity, but the regret in his voice sounded genuine. He lifted his gaze to the window behind her and pondered the island’s fiery glow. “You are not the only one who suffers tonight.”
He swigged at his bottle, then turned to us. His eyes wandered from Dan to me, then settled finally on Phoebe.
“I was badly treated by you. Very badly treated.” He stepped closer to her, peering into her eyes. “Do you think I am just a man who wears the mask of a god?”
“I think you are a liar and a murderer,” Phoebe said.
I swallowed, and glanced at Dan. The two of us looked at Phoebe.
Vassilos tugged the chafing bandage at his throat. “Then you do not know who I am.”
Phoebe stood defiant. “Yeah, I do. You’re a sick old drunk with delusions of—”
“Phoebe!” I said. “Easy.”
I turned to Vassilos. He had noticed Phoebe’s backpack laying on the bench and was peeking inside the top.
“What do you want?” I asked. “Why are you here?”
He set down his bottle and poked around inside the bag. “I fell asleep on your boat. I need for you to turn it around and please to take me back.”
Dan and I exchanged a glance.
“We can’t do that,” I said.
Vassilos lifted out the shriveled orchid we’d taken from the monastery. He delicately laid it out on a ledge.
Dan eyed it curiously.
“I’m afraid you have no choice,” he said. He was poking inside the bag again.
I furtively searched his waist with my eyes, looking for his gun. “Why?” I asked.
Now he pulled out the plastic bottle containing the purple kykeon. He held it up to the light. “Because you have seen things—things not meant to be seen.”
Dan hadn’t known about the kykeon sample; as Vassilos gently unscrewed the cap, he gaped at the precious elixir.
“We can’t go back,” I said. “They’ll kill us if we do.”
Vassilos took a whiff of the kykeon’s bouquet. “Yes. Is true. Our Mysteries will not tolerate those who cannot believe.”
He turned the bottle to spill out the contents.
“No!” Dan shouted. “Please—”
Vassilos paused. “But you must make a libation,” he said. “The god has been offended.” He began to pour the kykeon out.
“No!” Dan leapt forward, grasping the bottle. The two of them struggled with it. I started toward them. Vassilos grabbed his wine bottle and clobbered Dan on the head.
Dan fell back, staggering.
Phoebe and I took hold of him. He was gripping the precious bottle of kykeon upright in his hands.
“So be it,” Vassilos said angrily. “There are things more precious to be offered.” He reached beneath his shirttail and drew out his gun.
The three of us backed off. The critical question had finally been answered.
I glanced at the wall behind him. The ax lay propped by the bench.
Vassilos continued: “When Agamemnon set sail for Troy with his armies, the gods stopped the winds and his ships were stalled. When he asked the Oracle how to appease them, he was told he must sacrifice his daughter. This he did, and the winds returned. The fleet sailed on into history.”
Vassilos raised his gun, aiming it straight at Phoebe. “Let us see if your sacrifice will help to change our course.”
“Wait!” Dan shouted, stepping in front of her. “Please. Wait. I’ll take you—”
“He’s going to kill us all anyway,” Phoebe said. She glared at the Sheriff with loathing.
Behind Vassilos, Damiana was awakening.
Dan noticed it, too, and immediately tried to stall. “Killing us won’t end anything,” he said. “Tell them what happened to Agamemnon.”
Vassilos scoffed. “In America, Homer is cartoon.”
Behind him, Damiana quietly sat up. She saw him holding his gun on Phoebe.
“I’m not talking about the Iliad,” Dan said. “I’m talking about after the fall of Troy. When your victorious Greek heroes made their long journey home.”
Damiana’s gaze drifted toward the ax.
“You are speaking of the Odyssey,” Vassilos said.
“No,” Dan said. “I’m talking about Agamemnon. Remember how he was welcomed home?”
“Of course,” he said. “His wife, Clytemnestra, murdered him.”
“In revenge for his killing their daughter,” Dan said.
“Yes.”
Silently, Damiana rose to her feet.
Dan continued trying to keep the drunken cop distracted. “Then their son, Orestes, avenged his father by murdering his mother.”
“Yes,” he said. “He had no choice. This was his duty as a son.”
Damiana reached toward the wall for the ax.
“And for killing his mother,” Dan said, “Orestes was hounded and attacked by the Furies.”
Dan and I started toward him. Vassilos swiveled the gun from Phoebe to us. We froze.
Damiana rose up behind him.
Vassilos lifted his gun to our faces. “Is like I told you,” he said. “Greeks are accustom to trag—”
The double ax flashed. Dan and I dove to the floor. The gun fired—shattering a window.
I looked up. Vassilos stood stunned. He turned to Damiana. The ax was buried in his back.
Damiana stared at him, in shock at what she’d done. The Sheriff raised his gun to her.
Phoebe screamed, “No!”
I leapt at his arm as he fired off a shot—knocking the gun from his hand. The pistol skidded across the floor, and I went scrambling after it. I quickly grabbed it and turned, aiming the gun at the Sheriff.
Vassilos, staggering, fell against the console, the ax still sticking out from his back.
Damiana stood perfectly still. She reached up curiously and touched a spot of blood on her chest. The spot dilated like a blooming rose. She raised her gaze to us.
Phoebe cried out and ran to her as Damiana collapsed.
I held the gun on Vassilos. His back was soaked in blood. He looked at me, grimacing, and shoved himself up off the console. Straightening precariously, he staggered toward the door.
I kept the gun trained on him. As he went out, I followed.
Dan came out after me. We walked behind him as he lurched along, stumbling his way toward the stern. The ax stuck out from his back like a limb. He struggled and strained to grab it. His socks smeared the deck with blood. His lungs sucked in air.
At the stern he paused, breathing heavily. Clutching the rail to steady himself, he gazed out over the sea. In the distance the glow from the island was fading, the fire burning out.
Dan and I stood there watching Vassilos, watching the blood run down his back, waiting for him to die.
He turned, floundering, to face us. His mouth was filling with blood, and he sputtered as he spoke.
“I am a god…disguised as a man.”
I looked at him, then glanced at Dan. Finally, I lowered my pistol.
“Then you’re a god who’s dead,” I said.
He turned his faltering gaze to me. The words he spoke brought a shudder.” “You do not know what life is. You do not know who you are. “
He tum
bled back—and vanished. Dan and I rushed to the rail.
Below, there was nothing but the inky sea. We had not even heard the splash.
We turned as Phoebe approached behind us.
“Damiana is dead,” she declared.
29
WHEN THE great Greek playwright Aeschylus wrote the revenge trilogy of Orestes—father kills daughter, mother kills father, son kills mother—he managed to end the lugubrious tale on a surprisingly positive note. After killing Clytemnestra, Orestes is pursued by the Furies to Athens, where the goddess Athena takes pity on him, declaring that his fate should be decided in a trial. His defender in court is the god Apollo, his prosecutor the Chorus of Furies. When the ten-member jury ends in a split, Athena herself casts the deciding vote, and Orestes is spared. Compassion and the rule of law replace the barbarous tyranny of blood-for-blood. Athena persuades the Furies to tame their vengeful ways. They are transformed into the Eumenides, “the Kindly Ones,” and are given a temple at the base of the Acropolis where they’re worshipped as loving protectors of the Athenians.
The Furies in our tragedy, I regret to report, came to a far more grievous end. When the tower of the church collapsed, Thalia and twelve other women lost their lives. Twenty-three more suffered serious burns. Forty were hospitalized for smoke inhalation, and many more were injured or traumatized.
Considering the extent of damage to the church, it’s a wonder there weren’t more casualties. Most of the terra-cotta roof had collapsed, taking with it two of the narthex domes. The walls were badly charred and the famous frescoes ruined, but the majority of mosaics unaccountably survived, along with the principal dome, a fact proclaimed by the Orthodox bishop as nothing short of a miracle.
The three of us had landed on the island of Naxos, where we immediately turned Damiana’s body over to the local police. Our wounds were attended to and interrogations performed. The police subsequently invaded Ogygia. Investigators at the monastery discovered a kykeon “distillery,” and the following day we led them up to have a look at the bones in the cave. Working in concert with the Turkish police, they began an investigation of missing Turkish travelers and uncovered applicable records that went back at least forty years. Forensic specialists were called in and DNA testing began. Finally, the Hellenic Coast Guard started a search for the Sheriff’s corpse.
When word got out, the press descended like another horde of Furies. They pursued the three of us everywhere we went and swooped down on the island of Ogygia. On the morning we emerged from a legal deposition at a courthouse back in Athens, the crush of the reporters’ feeding frenzy felt like a media sparagmos.
The story blazed across Greece and Turkey, and then went totally global. My mother first saw it as a line on the Drudge Report: “American archeologists in Greece uncover deadly ancient sex cult.” From this minor misstatement, it grew into a kind of media myth, eventually devolving into a tabloid staple known as the “Night of the Furies.”
The Greeks seemed to take the whole thing with a shrug, but the people of Turkey were appalled. The two countries had always had a knife at each other’s throats, and now, with a couple of Americans involved, the Turks went into a frenzy. Conspiracy theories filled every fez. The CIA was to blame. The female secretary of state was a Fury. In the streets of Istanbul, enraged mobs burned effigies of the bewildered American president.
We watched it one night on the TV news in a bar near the Plaka in Athens. I couldn’t understand the Greek reporter’s words, but the faces and the crowds looked familiar. There was something Dionysian in their mad display of rage. Mouths drawn, fists clenched, shouting chants in unison, they seemed to lose themselves in their fury, merging in a mindless hysteria. It appeared as if they all had been invaded by the god.
Maybe Dionysus wasn’t dead after all. Despite a search that lasted weeks, the Coast Guard never found the body of Andreas Vassilos. Rumors arose of various sightings. Dan actually wondered if the guy was immortal, but Phoebe insisted the clown had simply drowned. I liked to think he’d been devoured by sharks in a frenzy of pelagic omophagia.
A Greek genealogist traced the Vassilos name back to the seventeenth century, but no one could prove a relation to the ancient and esteemed Eumolpidae. A search of his house on Ogygia, however, did uncover this: a sixth-century BC black-figure amphora, in astoundingly good condition, picturing a scene from Eleusis. Demeter holds stalks of grain while, beside her, Persephone pours a libation into the proffered cup of a young, beardless man. The ancient amphora—easily worth millions—went far beyond the pay grade of a lowly island cop. Most assumed it was a family heirloom passed down through generations.
As for the mysterious elixir, it turned out that the “sacred objects” had a sacred purpose. Dan figured out that the ashes from the bone fires provided potassium carbonate, a key ingredient of the kykeon. At this point he had absolutely everything he needed to finally write his dissertation. But with court dates and legalities and all the media attention, he found it impossible to work. The news had brought a flood of requests from pharmaceutical companies that hounded him with offers to develop the secret formula. Scores of potheads descended on Athens, seeking out the famous elixir and its legendary discoverer. Even the Greek government got into the act, and Dan’s graduate school became mired in a controversy: should an individual or academic institution have proprietary control of a religious sacrament? Shouldn’t the key ingredient of the Eleusinian Mysteries be the birthright of every living Greek?
In the midst of this perfect Dionysian storm of reporters, TV crews, cops, lawyers, executives, druggies, politicians, and protestors, Dan asked Phoebe to marry him. It came as something of a shock to her, particularly given the timing. Phoebe told me about the proposal a few days after he’d asked.
“What did you tell him?”
“I haven’t made up my mind,” she said.
I thought I knew what was holding her back. “If you need some space to think about it,” I said, “you could come stay with me in Rome.” I had to get back to renew my lease.
“Sure,” she said with a wry grin. “And what would I tell Dan?”
“You don’t have to tell him anything. You’re free to do as you like.”
“He loves me, Jack.”
“I know,” I said. “But that’s no longer the question.”
We looked at each other in silence.
Two more days passed. Dan continued pressing her, but Phoebe couldn’t decide. When it finally came time for me to head to Rome, Dan had a sudden inspiration.
“Dodona!” he said. “The Oracle of Zeus!”
Phoebe and I exchanged wary glances.
“I’ll rent a car, and we’ll drive you to Igoumenitsa,” he said. “You can take the ferry to Brindisi from there, then a train on to Rome.” He turned to Phoebe. “On the drive up we can stop at the ruins of Dodona. Who better than Zeus to help you decide?”
“Another oracle?” Phoebe whined.
“The oldest in Greece,” he said. “Older even than Delphi.”
“Don’t tell me we have to use the gas again,’ I said.
“No,” he said. “All you need to do up there is listen to the wind.”
IN A tiny, four-cylinder Opel, we drove with some considerable strain across the magnificent crest of the Pindus range in the northwest corner of Greece. It was the same mountain route, according to Dan, the ancient Romans had journeyed across to reach Byzantium—modern-day Istanbul. In the opposite direction, a short hop across the Adriatic, it linked up with the Appian Way, the ancient road to Rome. Caesar’s legions had marched this route to battle the forces of Pompey. Centuries later, Crusader columns snaked across it to take back the Holy Land. Now two American brothers and a pretty Dutch blonde were sputtering their way up the mountain road, with only the poor girl’s heart to be conquered.
In the old days, a trip to consult the Oracle of Zeus was a long and arduous journey. Over the course of that journey, pilgrims would have a good deal of time to mull ove
r their problem or dilemma, so that by the time they arrived and put their question to the god, they’d have worked it over, consciously and unconsciously, and be primed to hear the answer that they really needed to hear. In a way, deep down, they would already know the answer.
I thought about this with Phoebe. She’d grown quiet in the last few hours of the drive, staring out the window at the passing scenery. We were all exhausted from the punishing pressures of the past several weeks, but I couldn’t help wondering if her silence reflected some final decision about Dan.
We arrived near the end of the day at the ancient site of Dodona. It lay over a ridge in a broad, green valley, surrounded by spectacular mountains. We parked the car and stretched our legs. A breeze was blowing; the air was cool and fresh. Rugged blue peaks reached up into the clouds. The sun was setting behind them.
“It’s beautiful,” Phoebe said. The serenity of the place seemed to please her.
We paid the entry fee at the gate, and Phoebe used the bathroom. On the way back she consulted with the park official, an older woman with a badge on her blouse.
“Closes in an hour,” she said as she rejoined us. “Last bus leaves in twenty-five minutes, so most of the tourists should be gone.”
“Perfect,” Dan said.
We followed him into the ruins. The main feature was a large and impressive ancient theatre carved into the side of a hill. Tourists were having their pictures taken while their children checked out the acoustics. We continued down a path along a flat, grassy plain littered with gray foundation stones. Dan led us past a complex series of low walls and stacked blocks to what he said was the ancient Temple of Zeus.
Inside the square outline of stone stood a large, solitary oak tree.
“The tree,” he said, “is the Oracle.”
The original oak had died long ago, but the archeologists who had unearthed the site had planted this marvel in its place. The tree was tall and wide, a great spreading mass of black branches and flickering green and golden leaves. Although it wasn’t ancient, it gave off the tranquil aura of age and had a kind of gravity about it.
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