Athens Ambuscade

by Kristen Joy Wilks

  The thick weight of Heavenly Silence wrapped its folds around me.

  I let my head thump back against the kitchen wall and slowly slumped down the cheery flower printed paper until I sat on the floor. I set Chrysanthemum beside me, curled my knees up against my chest, and plopped my head into my hands. I had no plan.

  “Save Shane” is a goal, not a plan.

  And trusting God to come through on His own, without my help, had been the final feeble efforts of a woman without anything else to try. The police did not believe me, the bad guys had exactly what they wanted, my lawyer thought I was crazy, and my stuffed cat hadn’t been in the freezer quite long enough.

  Chrysanthemum’s face was starting to slough to one side, and as I stared at her less than perfect visage, one of the shiny glass eyes popped out and bounced across the floor.

  Then, up on the wall, high above me, the phone rang.

  18

  Wrong Number

  I sat, listening to the phone ring. It rang, and rang, and rang. Finally, I sighed and pushed myself up the wall far enough to reach up and snag it. I pressed the receiver against my ear, too tired to give any greeting.

  The familiar accented voice.

  That made me sit up and scramble for my purple pen and the pad of paper I kept by the phone. I had an exhaustive record of all my “wrong number” calls.

  “We have the taxidermist. Bring additional plaster and the tuxedo and gown that the boss ordered. It’ll be tight; the gala is tomorrow at 7:00. But this new guy is a pro. He’ll get the cat done and The Elgin Marbles will finally come home to Greece. Take the supplies to the entrance at the break in the stair in the Cave of Aglauros. Use the stele, not the hooded lady.”

  The line went dead.

  I slid back down the wall.

  Some way, somehow, the cat-nappers must have gotten Ya-Yá’s phone mixed up with the number of one of their minions. Perhaps this explained the switched cats. Maybe the freezer storage place had mixed up our info several months ago when Ya-Yá had first taken Chrysanthemum to be frozen. I glanced over at Chrysanthemum’s box.

  Instead of a name, the white identification sticker on the side had a phone number printed in smeary black letters across the side. Of course, they kept track of people’s storage units using the phone number they’d submitted at the office. Someone else must have taken a white cat in at the same time and boom! Irreparable confusion.

  However, the phone number mix up provided me a sneak peek at the cat-nappers’ plans.

  It seemed unlikely, but maybe, just maybe it was God? Could He actually be helping me? Was there some kind of plan after all? My plan had been so much better and had not involved any dead cats, whatsoever. Why would He go to the effort of allowing me to hear these ridiculous plans when He could have spent some of that time on my prayer chart?

  Um…thank You, Lord, I think.

  Well, at least I had a direction to go in. Shane was at the Cave of Aglauros, and the man in the suit wanted their cat stuffed for nefarious purposes having to do with the famous Elgin Marbles.

  This story would not endear me to the police.

  I kneaded my forehead with the pads of my fingers trying to think of a more sane sounding way to tell them that they must arrest a suit-wearing man at a Gala tomorrow, who had a stuffed cat upon his person, in order to save a taxidermist who had been kidnapped and hidden in a cave. Would mention of the Elgin Marbles add credibility to my tale? Hmmm…

  My lawyer was just pulling away from the curb when the wail of sirens broke the morning quiet. Ah, my ill-fated 1-1-2 call. Things were getting better and better. Perhaps if I pretended to be asleep, they would go away and bother some other crazy cat lady for a change.

  I considered approaching God with another request, but stopped myself. I had already offered up a petition on Shane’s behalf. A petition that was more open-ended and had less suggestions and charts and helpful hints than any prayer I had ever uttered.

  And after all that, a call from cat-snatching villains and the wailing of police sirens approaching Ya-Yá’s house was His only answer?

  I stopped up my heart and stared at the kitchen door keeping my concerns to myself.

  What did God care if one more twenty-seven-year-old wedding professional didn’t really trust Him deep down underneath. As long as I played my part well and didn’t make Him look bad, He would be fine.

  But then a quiet ache pressed against me until my breaths grew heavy within my chest, and I felt the silent wet of tears sliding down my cheeks. No. I told Him. You do not care about what is important to me. Why should I seek? Why should I follow? Why should I listen to you?

  In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.

  The sirens stopped, and the sound of footsteps came through the garden and up the stairs.

  All the “taking heart” in the world would not get Shane back.

  God didn’t appear to have any more of a plan than I did.

  Do not be afraid. Stand firm, and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today…The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.

  Be still? Was God off His rocker?

  Not that I had a better plan. I didn’t have any kind of plan whatsoever. The girl who’d had her life charted out twenty years ahead since grade school didn’t have a plan. This had to be some kind of monumental event. But nonetheless it was true. I had no plan.

  Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest…Take My yoke upon you…I am gentle and humble in heart…you will find rest for your souls…My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

  I felt as though I might slump right through the wall and disappear beneath the polished pine floorboards. How had He known? Scratch that, dumb question. Of course God would know. All my many prayer charts marched before my mind’s eye. I proclaimed Christ as my Lord, but had I ever really trusted Him…with anything. My hands tightened into fists, and I could feel my broken nails digging into the flesh of my palms. All my plans, my perfectly laid plans. I knew exactly what my God wanted of me and it was a terrible thought to contemplate.

  A knock pounded on the door.

  I waited another moment; perhaps I might wake up and all this ridiculousness would fade away into the land of nightmares and dreams.

  The knock came again.

  I looked over at Chrysanthemum and grimaced. What was it that horrified me so much about getting that cat stuffed? The live animal had been mean and unpredictable, purring one moment and scratching the next. But I had preferred her in all her hissing fury to this newly-stuffed silent version of herself.

  I stared into the remaining glassy black eye of the fluffy Persian.

  She was shaped right. She was soft and pleasant to look at. She didn’t scratch anymore. I reached out and stroked her silky back. Despite the appearance of life, Chrysanthemum was stiff and hard beneath my touch.

  That was it.

  The stuffed cat was a fake. Something that looked like an actual animal, but it wasn’t, not really.

  The knock came again.

  A surge of nausea washed over me.

  Was that what God felt when He looked at me? I looked like a good, Christian girl. But God saw to the very depths of my being. Did He get the same inexplicable shiver when He looked into my eyes as I got when I met the gaze of my Ya-Yá’s stuffed cat? Fake.

  I was a fake too, just like Chrysanthemum. A pretend Christian; the believer who didn’t know how to trust.

  The knocking was rattling the door now.

  Part of me just wanted to sit down and weep.

  God had known all along. All this time that I was raging against that ridiculous dead cat, I myself had been just as unsightly. Just as much a fake. The empty carcass of a woman, pretending to trust in God.

  OK, Lord. I sacrifice my plans. All of them. They are dead. They are Yours. I am Yours. If You have some sort of plan for today…I’ll come along. I’m listening.

  Anoth
er pounding knock sounded, and a stern male voice informed me that I was about to play hostess to the police.

  I got to my feet.

  Hey, the policeman at my door was God’s problem.

  All I needed to do was hop on out of the kitchen and go open the door. I opened the door.

  The policeman scanned my face, compared it to the sketch in his hand, and pressed his thumb against his walkie-talkie. “Yep, this is her.”

  “Can I help you, sir?” I asked in my best attempt at Greek.

  He switched to English.

  “It’s Officer Rota. We have a call from this number stating that a man in a suit has stolen your taxidermist and made off with a dead cat?”

  “Yeah, about that, Officer Rota.”

  “No need to explain, I know how boring things can get over the summer months. But I must insist that you cease using emergency services for prank calls. It wastes the time of the people who are trying to protect you. And someone with a more urgent call could be kept waiting.”

  “Um…” I glanced down at the sketch.

  “Yes, it is you. But the charges have been dropped. Mr. Lasko says now that he has the correct cat, he will not fault you for your mistake.”

  “Oh, good.” A long silence had me biting my lip wanting to keep silent and out of jail. But for once in my life, the next step was clear, if I dared to take it.

  Tell him, Child.

  “I wasn’t making it up. Some men came and took the taxidermist I hired from the States, and I’ve had a bunch of calls from a wrong number that point to a bomb going off at a gala tomorrow at seven that has something to do with the Elgin Marbles.”

  There, I’d said it. Now it was up to God to keep me out of the drunk tank.

  Officer Rota stared at me for a moment. “Do you know how farfetched that sounds, Miss?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Besides the time, I suppose. There is a gala tomorrow night at seven. The curator of the British museum is speaking and the Elgin Marbles will, of course, come up. But I see no reason to suspect a bomb despite the prank calls you have been receiving. I shall, however, put it in our file of possible threats.”

  The words seemed to appear out of the nether before leaving my lips, but I stepped closer to him and found myself imploring the reluctant officer one more time for help. “Will there be a police presence at the gala?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Then do this for me. If someone appears with a white stuffed cat, you must seize that man and the cat. They are involved with the bomb; in fact, the cat will probably be the bomb. And if the cat or the bomb is at the gala, you must send a sizable police force to the cave of Aglauros. The mastermind behind the exploding cat will be there, or close by, or at the very least, his associates with be around.” Wow, I was sounding more delusional with every word.

  Officer Rota stepped away from me and smiled. “If such an event occurs, I assure you that I will send at least ten officers. Thank you, Ma’am.” He stepped backwards, farther away from the crazy cat lady.

  Oh, how far I had fallen.

  “Have a good day.”

  Officer Rota walked down the stairs, but paused at the landing. “You should know that there are a number of people at the station who wanted me to confiscate your stuffed cat.” He nodded to where I’d tucked Chrysanthemum under my arm.

  “They felt that a reminder to laugh on the difficult days would be a service to Athens, and that your furry friend there would supply enough hilarity to keep the entire police force in an amicable mood for years to come. But I see that you are attached, and you didn’t throw empty cans at my car like the last cat lady I confronted, so I will let your keep your furry friend. But please, do not call 1-1-2 unless you are facing an actual emergency.”

  As I watched him stride through the garden and slide into his car, my stomach tightened into a hard little ball.

  What if it was an actual emergency and no one believed it?

  19

  The Cave of Aglauros

  I could see the cave of Aglauros from the street of tripods. But it took quite a bit of hiking to actually get there. This time I had donned more sensible attire. Hiking boots, khaki shorts with lots of pockets, and a faded man’s dress shirt that had been a favorite in college. I stuffed anything that seemed remotely helpful into all those pockets.

  God had not provided me with a step by step outline for rescuing Shane. What He did provide was something of a hunch and the terrible conviction that I was supposed to consider the aforementioned hunch to be a real, live plan and then just wing it.

  I packed accordingly: a headlamp, a handful of pistachios, a tube of breath mints, a felt-tipped marker that was a combination compass and pressure gauge, a tiny pot of white shoe polish, nail clippers, five small adhesive bandages, and a travel guide from 1996. All I lacked was a pith helmet.

  Sadly, my clothing choices did not help me get into the cave. I found an ancient stair cut into the mountainside. Apparently it had once led all the way from the cavern to the top of the Acropolis. Now the steps broke away, and all I could do was stare into the foreboding maw of a narrow chasm.

  I did not have a rope or any positive rock climbing experiences that might inspire me to venture down into that dimly lit hole. I’m pretty sure that sitting at the top of a fifty foot cliff for three hours trembling with fear while wearing a rock climbing harness, does not make one an expert.

  Instead, I scrambled up the hillside and past a small chapel on the north-west corner of the Acropolis. Eventually, a dark rift appeared in the side of the rock. I wriggled through, bending my body to conform to the rock. I straightened as the ceiling grew taller.

  After scrambling over a barricade of stone, I was able to enter the cave of Aglauros. Cramped no longer, the cavern stretched out above me. The ceiling was vast and arched like a cathedral. I saw the remainder of the stone stair ahead. Now what? I didn’t see a stele anywhere.

  I flipped through the tattered tour guide that had been a staple during the years that Ya-Yá and I hiked around the city and surrounding countryside finding info for my obligatory research paper.

  My parents required I read five books, do one research paper, and learn to cook one Greek meal every summer. They were always a little disappointed when I came home and showed them how I’d learned to bake five new kinds of Greek pastry. Since that avalanche of sweets made up a five course dessert buffet, Ya-Yá always assured me that it constituted a meal.

  Ah, my tour guide clearly stated that the stele identifying the cave was down the slope from the cavern mouth.

  I tromped over the wall, squeezed through the crack, and hiked down the hill a ways.

  The slope was a jumble of low green growth and sharp lumps of the natural white marble that made up the hill of the Acropolis above. Even though I was sticky with sweat and concentrating on keeping myself from tumbling to my doom on an errant scrap of marble, the scene made me pause.

  So much color. A swipe of robin’s egg blue across the Mediterranean sky, ancient white marble, and the flush of green growth clinging to the mountain. God seemed to create His most glorious splendors in hard to reach places.

  I paused and sucked in a few breaths admiring the panorama of Athens spread out below.

  As though the people had wanted to blend in with God’s color scheme, most of the buildings were white like the marble jutting from the green around me.

  I scanned the hillside once more and spotted an ancient marker stone.

  The stone was grimy, and if there were any secret codes or levers on it, I couldn’t find them. But after over two millennia tucked into the stony bank, it was still in pretty good condition.

  According to my tour guide, it simply named the cavern as a sanctuary of Aglauros and told a bit about some priestess. The smear of mud on the stele looked fresh, and I scrubbed at it with a handful of dry grass. The dirt came away, and I noticed a round indentation at the base of the ancient marker. Weird.

  I poked
my finger inside. Nothing happened. I pushed against the indentation with all the strength of my index finger, which wasn’t all that fabulous, but hey, at least I tried.

  The stone, the ancient stone that had stood in the same place for over two thousand years, moved under my touch. Not the body of the stele, but the rock within the indent.

  I stepped back and felt around the rocky hillside looking for a stick that was just the right diameter. After a frustrating search and a twisted ankle, I rushed back, stick in hand. I shoved the stick into the indent.

  Slowly, the stone plug sank deep into the stele. That was it?

  I’d pushed the ancient elevator button, but where was my ride?

  I stared at the stele for a long, hot minute trying to ignore the sun on my back and the sticky tangle of my ponytail against my neck. The phone call had talked about the cave. What if the stele was just the door knob?

  I ran back up the hillside and hiked until I got to the proper entrance. Then I squeezed through the rock and into the mountain. When I finally came to the cave of Aglauros and scrambled over the low wall something was different.

  The ancient stone stair still crouched, half broken in the side of the cavern. But beneath it a dark rift had appeared. Spiraling down into the darkness was a second stair. Solemn and ancient, the stone steps gleamed up at me. A flawless white marble stair, un-chipped. The steps remained cool and perfect as they had been for thousands of years.

  I pulled out my phone to call the police.

  It was dead.

  I sat down at the edge of that strange, dark stair and let my feet dangle into the chasm. A cool draft moved up the steps. It ruffled my hair, drying the sweat on my scalp and sending a chill across my skin.

  The police didn’t believe me, and they knew where to go if something made them change their mind about my sanity.

  I had done everything I could to avoid having to walk down this white stair into the darkness. But the stair remained, and I alone could go down it. I stood and prayed with that silent, inarticulate scream of a child lost in the dark.

  Oh, God! Help.

  Then I sucked in a shaky breath, pulled my headlamp out of one of my many pockets, and placed my foot upon the stair.