He carefully climbed onto the chair and positioned his arms and legs. For the first time, just the fact that Lab Coat Guy was tying him down made him feel so helpless, even claustrophobic. They could do anything to him, anything at all, and no one would ever know.
He looked over at the baby. She was squirming like crazy. It was all the guard could do to keep ahold of her. She saw Daniel look over, and thrust her arms toward him. “Nayal,” she said.
But he couldn’t help her. He couldn’t even help himself.
The doctor came over, as usual, with the blood-drawing needle on a tray. She set it down on the larger tray connected to the torture chair. There were so many vials. What if he didn’t have that much blood left? She reached across and looked at his right arm and its multiple puncture marks.
Then she picked up his left. It was also peppered with needle tracks. The grimace still hadn’t left her face. She picked up the short rubber tie and wrapped it around his upper arm. Then she started thumping his arm, looking for any remaining possible vein.
Daniel looked away as she inserted the needle. For the first time, though, she couldn’t find a vein. She didn’t say anything. She thumped again. He started to cry.
She didn’t bother to tell him everything would be OK.
He went somewhere else in his mind, tried to think about Jimi, who he was, what that meant. The doctor had found a vein, and she was taking blood and blood and blood. It was going on forever. It was never going to stop.
Daniel was beginning to feel sick, not only weak but nauseous. Just crappy. And his arm was burning. It hurt so much. Just when he thought it would never end, that the rest of his life would be pain and burning, she stopped. He kept his eyes closed. He couldn’t move.
Someone undid his bonds, but he couldn’t move. He felt like he was floating, but he was so heavy he couldn’t move. Heavy floating.
“Get up!” yelled Lab Coat Guy.
Daniel didn’t care.
The goon circled the chair and pushed at Daniel from the other side. Finally the two of them together had gotten him up, and Lab Coat Guy had tried to walk him across the room. It only worked for a few feet. Daniel passed out and slid to the floor.
When he came to a few minutes later, he was still in a heap on the tile. He heard the little girl screaming and crying, taking big gulps of air, then choking on her own tears. He wanted so desperately to hurt someone, to take her and go. But he could barely sit up.
She cried for a long time. And then she stopped.
The doctor lady came over to him then. She helped him sit up against a wall, and she gave him orange juice to drink. “Any better?” she asked.
He looked away. She nodded to the goons and they came and each grabbed an arm and made him stand up. Then one of them held him while the other one went over to the chair and undid the restraint that held the form of the baby. She was limp.
He walked over, and Lab Coat Guy started pushing Daniel toward the door.
“Give her to me,” Daniel said, fiercely. The goon seemed only too happy to comply. He accepted the small bundle and pulled her to him with his right arm.
Then Daniel turned around to the doctor.
“You said I could go out,” he demanded. “You gave your word.”
The doctor said, “I think you’d better lie down for a while, then have some lunch. Then you can go out. I promise.”
He still felt like crap. But he cradled the little girl—at least she was still breathing. And this time, he looked with interest at the other closed doors as he was taken back to his cell.
February 26, 2006, 6:06 a.m.
Lefkon Bay, Patmos
* * *
Jaime sat in the darkness, watching as Britta Sunmark’s fiancé, Constantine, awoke in his small whitewashed house on Lefkon Bay and began turning on lights. First the bedroom light had gone on, then the bathroom light. The bedroom shades were drawn, so Jaime couldn’t tell if he was there alone.
He apparently had showered and dressed, because when he appeared in the kitchen, his black hair and beard were wet and he was wearing jeans and a gray Henley. He turned on lights under the kitchen cabinets. She was surprised to see he had a professional-quality beverage machine, which made one cup of coffee, tea, or cappuccino at a time. She envied him for the time it took him to choose his beverage, pop the container into the machine, and turn it on.
Apparently he was alone. At least he didn’t make a hot beverage for anyone else, and no one joined him as he moved through the living room to go out onto the small terrace overlooking the ocean. He held his mug in both hands and looked out over the dark Aegean while he sipped his morning drink.
In a moment he went back inside, got a pastry from the kitchen, and sat down on the living room sofa and had breakfast while reading what appeared to be a paperback novel.
Jaime sat comfortably, hidden from view by a stone wall across the street. She had already put a locator device on his scooter, so she wouldn’t have to follow him too closely. She tried not to get antsy. It was all she could do not to go ring the doorbell and ask where Britta Sunmark was. There would be time for that. Just not yet.
At about 6:35, he got up, returned his plate to the kitchen sink, and disappeared back into the bedroom. When he reemerged ten minutes later, Jaime’s eyebrows raised in surprise. He’d changed clothes.
He now wore a blue anteri—a monk’s inner robe. It was of Greek Orthodox style, rather full in the waist, which he tightened with a cord. He didn’t have the skoufos, the flat brimless hat, or the exorassa, the outer cassock. This implied he was either a seminarian or a novice and hadn’t yet been tonsured and accepted as a full-fledged monk.
She shook her head. This made no sense. How could Britta Sunmark’s fiancé be a monk? And why would a monk live by himself on Lefkon Bay? She didn’t know what Constantine looked like—perhaps she’d been watching the wrong house!
But before she could start looking for house numbers to correct her error, the monk came outside, flung a messenger-style bag across his back, hiked up his cassock, and took off on his scooter.
Jaime took a moment to make certain she had him as a moving dot on her display screen. Then, after he disappeared around a bend in the road, she went over to his house. Her lock jimmy worked like magic. She easily let herself in through the terrace door. Whoever he was, he apparently wasn’t overly concerned about either being robbed or having his stuff rifled through.
He had a small version of the typical Patmos house—rectangular, whitewashed, rooms divided from each other by arched doorways.
The first thing she found, on a kitchen counter, was a small stack of mail. It was addressed to Constantine Sozon. OK. This was the place. She glanced at her handheld screen, watching him drive farther and farther away. She didn’t want to spend much time here when he could possibly be headed straight for Ms. Sunmark.
Jaime glanced around walls and tabletops for photos, saw none, went quickly into the bedroom—where he had made the bed—and pulled open the single drawer in the wooden bedside table.
Inside she found what she had been looking for. It was a photo of the man who had just left, with an unidentified woman. They were sitting, smiling in a café, leaning in toward each other. The woman had white-blond hair and looked as though she could possibly be a Scandinavian person named Britta. She was half a head shorter than he, or so it seemed, though they were both seated. Of course, it could be Constantine’s sister or his cleaning woman. Or, if he was as friendly as the nurse’s aide had implied back in Athens, it could be any female person between here and there. There was no way to prove it was Britta Sunmark. But it was the only photo Jaime could find. So she quickly scanned it into her handheld and replaced the original. Then she let herself out. There was no way to relock the terrace door, so she’d just have to hope he wouldn’t notice.
She crossed the street and walked ten meters off the road to where she’d hidden her own scooter. Constantine was still traveling, heading south, just now pas
sing Chora.
Fortunately, there weren’t many roads on the island. It was still dark as she took off following the direction he’d taken.
OK, friendly monk with a fiancée, she thought, show me what you’re up to.
February 26, 2006, 7:07 a.m.
Petra Hotel
Fishing village of Grikos, Patmos
* * *
The sky was wearing the silver veil that signaled the coming dawn. Geri sat at a round marble-top table settled next to the terrace wall overlooking Grikos Bay. Nestor was still awakening slowly in their suite, but she had been up for hours. First she had slipped out onto their private terrace, just over the bay, holding her Bible. It had been too dark to read, but she had been happy to hug the book to herself and sit quietly at the small table, listening to the lap of the water.
This was where history had happened. There was something holy, right here on this island, and now she was a part of it. She envied John being here when the island was modest. It seemed so funny to her that when God spoke quietly to a holy person it was human nature to build a huge edifice atop the spot. What if they’d said, “This is where John had his vision. We’re leaving the island pristine and serene so that others may come, humbly seeking their own experience”?
Instead, it seemed humans continued to worship other humans’ experiences rather than making themselves available to have one of their own.
When the clock had crept past six, Geri had showered, dressed, quietly left her room, and come through the hotel out onto the restaurant terrace. There was a beautiful long open-air bar made of local stone. On the far end, the same stone continued as a horizontal rock wall with rock pillars on either end, which formed a sort of picture frame, with curtains open to profuse vegetation. Straight ahead was Grikos Bay, Tragonisi Island not far offshore.
She’d found the light switch that illuminated the bar and the rock walls. Then she’d sat with her journal in the winter morning air. A little before seven, a young woman from the hotel had found her there and brought out a pot of coffee and some pastries.
And then, at seven precisely, Brother Timothy strode through the door. Geri loved his confidence and exuberance. She loved that he strode.
He saw her at once and took the second chair at her table. She’d gotten a second coffee cup, and he gratefully accepted the steaming beverage that she’d poured for him.
“So tell me,” she said.
He leaned and put his large hands over hers. He looked at her intently.
“I will tell you,” he said, “about the wonderful thing I found as I worked, going through and classifying so many ancient artifacts, texts, letters, and scrolls in the monastery library.
“We talked yesterday about John’s vision, what it meant, and the stupendous original monastery and basilica that was built here on Patmos—and which was destroyed.
“But what happened thereafter, and what John’s vision truly meant, was passed on, like most history lessons, by men with an agenda. Men who will only reveal what they want you to see, and will slyly conceal the rest. Men who profit from these secrets, at the expense of people like you and me whom they keep in the dark.
“I don’t believe these secrets were meant to be kept by an elite few. The world deserves to know what I have recently discovered.”
Brother Timothy paused. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, wiped his brow, which was sweating, even in the chilly air.
Geri smiled at him, encouraging him to continue.
“A year ago I came to the Monastery of St. John to study some of the documents contained in their library. These documents were original letters written by the hand of Arsenios Skinouris, the monk who sought out the Reverend Father Christodoulos in 1085 to request assistance in rebuilding the Monastery of St. John here on Patmos. As you may recall, it was Christodoulos who was successful in getting the emperor to agree to the building of the new monastery. In fact, the emperor gave control of the island to Father Christodoulos.
“You can imagine how excited I was to find original letters written by Skinouris himself! Most of his letters talked about plans for the monastery, and even contained drawings and schematics for the interconnecting courtyards, chapels, and stairways.
“One of these letters, however, contained a theological treatise about the fall of Babylon and the dawning of a new heaven and new earth. He closed the letter with Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they will have the right to drink from the river of life and may enter the city by the gates. I found the language and word usage familiar, and that night went to the passage in my Greek New Testament that closely matched the close of that letter. It was in the Revelation of John, chapter twenty-two, verse fourteen. Do you remember? It says: Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and may enter the city by the gates.
“Of course, a monk from this monastery would naturally pattern his writing after his Patron Father, Saint John of Patmos! It should have occurred to me. There was nothing surprising in that at all. But I was intrigued by the slight change in the text, and wondered what might have caused Skinouris to alter it. Hoping for some clues, I began to search for other letters written by Skinouris. In doing so, I found scores of schematics in his hand, for the various levels of the monastery, and nothing more. However…
“While searching, I discovered a tin filled with documents saved when the Grand Basilica was burned to the ground by the Turks in the sixth century. These documents were notes and letters of the senior cleric at the basilica when the Turks captured the island.
“Now, here is where it really starts to get interesting. When these documents were placed side by side with the letters from the monk Skinouris, even my untrained eye could tell they seemed to be written by the same, distinctive hand. But this was impossible! How could they have been written by the same person some five hundred years apart? Surely someone had placed this tin of letters here as a prank, hoping some unsuspecting fool like myself would fall for the joke.
“But my curiosity got the best of me, and I am afraid I did something rather devious at this point. (May God forgive me!) I ‘borrowed’ a few of the notes from the tin, and one of the letters from Skinouris, sealed them in a Ziploc bag, and took them to the mainland without telling anyone or asking permission. There I found an expert in handwriting analysis. He assured me these must have been written by the same hand. My next step was lab analysis of the paper and ink from the notes and letters. The results? The notes from the tin were fourteen hundred years old, give or take a few decades. The Skinouris letter was nine hundred years old. The only logical conclusion was that the cleric of the sixth century and the monk of the eleventh century were one and the same!
“After finding a safe place to store the letters, I returned to Patmos. I had to discover the secret of this man who had lived some five hundred years, or more. Can you even think such a thing is possible?”
Geri was staring at him, her mind taking in what he was saying but reserving judgment. Of course she could think of such a thing. She heard Nestor and his scientists talk about it all the time.
“I began to study the schematics. Why was he so intimately involved in the plans for the monastery? Skinouros had sketched out stairways and courtyards with hidden doors and hallways that seemed to lead nowhere. Many of the sketches had special markings with no legend. An x here, a check mark there, but no description or explanation. He also drew many sketches of a laundry area deep in the basement underneath the chapel. Why would he be so focused on the place where robes and linens would be washed?
“I had to wonder. The story goes that the current monastery was designed to be labyrinthine, passageways and tunnels going nowhere, false passages, things like that—to fool the pirates and marauders. But… what if there was a plan behind all of it? What if some passages were fake—but others were not? What if something was being purposely concealed?
“Then it hit me. Return to the text of the monk’s treatise. Ble
ssed are those who wash their robes, so that they will have the right to drink from the river of life.
“The river of life, eternal life, fountain of youth, call it what you will, this man had discovered it. And who could this man be but the one to whom the angel first brought a vision of a new heaven and new earth? The man to whom this same angel revealed the hidden location of the river of life, from which he drank, and lived for centuries as a guardian of its secret location. Saint John the Apostle!
“Geri, I know this sounds crazy, believe me. But does it really sound any more incredible than the other things written in John’s vision? Just hear me out.
“Looking at all the maps that the holy man had drawn, it occurred to me that the river of life must be flowing deep beneath the bowels of the monastery chapel, and his schematics must reveal the key that will unlock the secrets hidden below.
“I now know this to be true. Parts of the vision which John had were not of some distant heavenly landscape at all—they were right in front of him, here on Patmos, as he wrote!”
The monk sat up and finally took a deep breath. “I’m not expecting you just to believe all this on my say-so. I’ve found it, Geri,” he said in an urgent whisper. “As have those called before me. It’s there. It’s real. I can take you to it. You can dip your hands in the flowing stream. The river of life.”
He sat for a moment, now in the full winter sun. He bent down to the knapsack he carried. And he carefully removed a gallon-sized Ziploc bag. He undid the seal and took out two documents. Both looked old. The types of paper were very different.
He put them down, side by side on the marble table.
Geri looked at the words written in Greek. The handwriting, as Brother Timothy had said, was very distinct.
And it was obviously the same.
“Oh, dear Lord,” Geri breathed.
“Indeed,” said Brother Timothy. He put his hand over hers once more. “Geri, as I said, I believe there’s a reason you’re here. And I don’t want you to take my word for any of this. I want to show you. I want you to see it with your own eyes.”
Beyond Eden Page 13