Prey on Patmos

by Jeffery Siger

  She paused and shut her eyes. “But he was more than just a member of the Holy Administration. He was from a senior monastery.” Maggie opened her eyes. “And that made him protos, the head of it all. He’s their president, the most powerful churchman on Mount Athos.”

  Andreas picked up the flash drive and stared at it. He’d guessed right about the man being from the Holy Mountain, but never imagined that it was his mountain. “You know, Maggie, somehow I’m not as excited as I once was to learn what’s on this thing.” He fluttered his lips. “But what the hell, what’s the worst that can happen?”

  He slid the drive into his computer’s USB port, hoping the answer to his question was not eternal damnation.

  ***

  The Protos wasn’t used to arriving home in secret. But Sergey was adamant. No one should see them arriving so early in the morning from the mainland. Karyas was a small village and gossip its primary pastime—especially among civilians working for the civil governor appointed by Greece’s ministry of foreign affairs and charged with supervising the area’s secular matters. It was their way of impressing coworkers back on the mainland that what they did really was important, even if they seemed to be living in the middle of nowhere.

  A simple, “It’s Easter Week and the Protos was away last night,” would spawn endless speculation on his whereabouts, and perhaps a “My cousin Nick drives a taxi and thought he saw the Protos at the Athens airport,” followed by more speculation over the reason for the trip at such a busy time. That was not the sort of gossip Sergey wanted to risk reaching the ears of nervous killers.

  By mid-morning they were back at the Protaton, in the Protos’ Church, a place of serenity and prayer. Yet the Protos’ thoughts were on its martyrs, for here a protos and monks loyal to him were slaughtered on orders of a ruler who had replaced Orthodoxy with another faith and sought retribution against that protos for denouncing his new faith as heresy. But that was in 1282, in a time of savage zealots murdering monks in the name of God.

  The words repeated through the Protos’ mind: “a time of savage zealots, murdering monks in the name of God.” He shook his head and thought of Vassilis. Old friend, why did you get us into this?

  ***

  Three faces stared at the computer screen. Twenty-one faces stared back. Make that forty-two: twenty-one on each of two photographs. That was all Andreas, Kouros, and Maggie found on the flash drive. That and a few cryptic lines typed on a one-page document. The reluctant computer whiz that Andreas had Kouros “drag up here by his geek whatever” had no better luck. He swore nothing else was on the drive and left.

  They’d been staring at the photographs for what seemed eternity, and must have read the words a hundred times. The document bore no sender or recipient, only two lines: The end will come as a thief in the night. Prepare, for the time is in their hands.

  “Okay, I get the ‘thief in the night’ reference to Revelation,” said Maggie. “No one knows when the end may come, so be prepared spiritually and morally for that moment, but the part about time being ‘in their hands’ makes no sense. Eastern Orthodoxy doesn’t believe mortals can bring about or even anticipate the end.”

  Kouros smiled. “Sort of sounds like the answer I get every time I ask a Greek bureaucrat about the status of anything. ‘It will happen when it happens, it’s in God’s hands.’”

  Andreas laughed, Maggie stuck out her tongue.

  “So whose ‘hands’ are we talking about?” said Kouros. “It has to tie into the photographs; otherwise, why did he put it on the drive?”

  “Well, we know one of them is the Protos, so unless he’s a bad guy, it can’t be all of them.” Andreas kept switching between the two photographs; each showed twenty-one clerics, identically posed in full regalia in three rows of seven, as if attending the same ceremony. The photographs looked to be taken at the same time, although in one a tiny oriental rug was centered at the feet of the clerics in the front row and an empty chair sat at the right end of each row. He shook his head. “There’s something not right about this.” He brought the photos up onto the screen together, one above the other.

  “Look here.” Andreas pointed his left index finger to the top photo, at the cleric on the left end of the bottom row, and his right index finger at the one in the same position in the bottom photo. Slowly, he moved his fingers across each row, cleric by cleric.

  “My God,” said Maggie.

  “It’s the same bodies in each photograph,” said Kouros.

  Andreas nodded and leaned back in his chair. “Someone spent a lot of time and care putting new heads on old bodies.”

  “But why?” said Kouros.

  “The answer to that probably answers everything.” Andreas leaned forward and stared at the photographs. “And why the three empty chairs and that carpet in one, but not the other? Were they added to the one or deleted from the other?”

  Silence.

  “Maggie, do you recognize any of them?”

  “A few. These are abbots from monasteries at Mount Athos.” She pointed to five faces on the photograph without the empty chairs. “But I have no idea who the others are. Some men from my church might know; they’re regulars at Mount Athos.”

  Andreas gestured no. “Nobody but us can know about this. If there’s a message hidden in all this, and there must be, we can’t risk letting it out to the wrong people. And I have no goddamn idea who the wrong people are.” He picked up a pencil.

  Maggie smiled. “Is this snap-and-throw time? You’re averaging two dozen a week.”

  Andreas put down the pencil. “Cute. Now would you please ask our computer guru which photo is the original?” He pressed a button on the keyboard, pulled out the drive, and handed it to her. “And this time, you can take the drive to him. Just copy everything first.”

  “Will do. Bye-bye.”

  “Bye. So, what do we do now?” asked Kouros.

  “Only thing I can think of is to ask the Protos if he sees anything in all this. After all, he’s in one of the photos and Vassilis was taking everything to him.”

  “Or so he says,” said Kouros.

  Andreas nodded. “Good point. But I don’t see any other play, do you?”

  “No.”

  Andreas paused. “But first.” He picked up the phone and dialed.

  “Tassos, can you talk?”

  He pointed to the extension and gestured for Kouros to pick up.

  “Sure. My office line is secure,” said Tassos.

  “Good, Yianni and I have something to run by you. It’s about that guy who belongs to the phone number you got for us.” Andreas briefly told him of his meeting with the Protos and that they’d found what he believed Vassilis was passing on to the Protos.

  “How do you know he’s the Protos?”

  “You mean Maggie didn’t tell you?”

  Tassos’ tone turned serious. “Maggie and I have a wonderful relationship. She refuses to tell me anything about the other men in her life, and I don’t ask.” He laughed.

  Andreas chuckled. “Fair enough. She recognized his voice when transcribing the tape. He’s the Protos, for sure. Do you know him?”

  “Yes, but he’s in his seventies, and I knew him when he was a lot younger. I’d just started out on the force and he wasn’t protos then, just a priest visiting my guests.”

  Andreas knew Tassos was referring to his time guarding political prisoners. He wondered if the Protos had followed Tassos’ strategy of making friends with the inmates, so that if they returned to power he’d still have friends in government.

  “He was pretty respected, though, even back then,” said Tassos.

  “By whom?”

  “Everyone, as far as I could tell. After all, the junta let him visit prisoners. And they were paranoid about visitors serving as messengers, especially clerics.”

  “So they trusted him
?”

  “As far as I could tell. Why, is that what you’re worried about, trusting him?”

  “You’re as bad as Lila, always reading my mind.”

  “Hopefully you’re thinking different thoughts around her.”

  Kouros laughed.

  “Glad one of you likes my humor. And to answer your question, I never heard anyone suggest, ‘Don’t trust him.’ But that could mean one of two things: either he can be trusted, or is so devious no one could tell that he can’t be.”

  “So which is it?”

  “Damned if I know. And the fact he’s as important as he is in the church doesn’t prove anything one way or the other.”

  “Tell me about it,” said Kouros.

  Andreas rolled his eyes at Kouros. “Spare me, please.” He cleared his throat and said to Tassos, “What’s your instinct?”

  Tassos let out a deep breath. “Can’t say, haven’t spoken with him in years, and rarely does he appear in public anymore. Don’t even know whom to ask without it getting back to him for sure. I think you’ll have to go with your gut. If you’re so worried about trusting him, I assume it’s critical.”

  “It’s the whole game. If he’s on the wrong side…I don’t want to think about it.”

  “Good luck.”

  “Yeah, thanks.”

  “Love to Lila.”

  Andreas hung up and stared out the window. He spoke as if thinking aloud. “Why would the Protos have pushed so hard for an investigation if he was involved as a bad guy? Then again, if he was worried someone might make the connection—like by finding what’s on that flash drive—that kind of move gave him a former prime minister to vouch for him as the champion of the impartial investigation. What a super-smart move. And ballsy.”

  Andreas let out a breath, turned to Kouros, and shrugged. “Maggie, get in here. Please.”

  The door swung open. “If you want to know about the photos—”

  “Is everyone reading my mind today? How the hell did you know I wanted to ask you about the Protos?”

  Maggie walked over to his desk, leaned over, and exaggeratingly enunciated, “I said ‘photos,’ not protos. The guru said he didn’t have to look at the photos again. The photo with the Protos was the original. Everything else was added on.”

  “Why didn’t he tell us that in the first place?” said Andreas.

  “My guess is, he didn’t like being ‘dragged’ by his ‘whatever,’ so if you guys didn’t ask, you didn’t get.” Maggie handed him a pencil. “Here, snap and throw one, it will relax you.”

  Andreas just stared at her. “I need your knee-jerk instinctive yes-or-no reaction to something.”

  She nodded.

  “Do you think the Protos could be one of the bad guys?”

  “No.”

  He nodded. “Okay, that’s good enough for me.”

  “Please God,” Maggie added, and crossed herself.

  Chapter Ten

  Easter was the main event in Eastern Orthodoxy. No day was as hallowed or meaningful, and it was preceded by more than a week of significant religious observations and cultural traditions. As much as Greeks complained about the workings of their church—along with every other hierarchical institution touching their lives—there was no question whatsoever of their deep loyalty to their faith. No more so, perhaps, than on Patmos, except of course for Mount Athos. In fact, you couldn’t pick a worse time than Easter Week for trying to get the attention of churchmen in either place. That made Andreas’ complicated investigation even trickier.

  He wondered if that was coincidence, or part of some, he hoped, not divine plan.

  Still, using the Protos’ private number Andreas was able to get him on the phone and pressed him to meet immediately. At first the Protos resisted, saying he couldn’t possibly leave Mount Athos again this week. His absence would attract too much attention. Andreas said that for the same reason it was not wise for him to come to Mount Athos. “Attention is something neither of us wants, considering what I have to show you.”

  At that the Protos suggested they meet in Ouranoupolis, a seaside village at the threshold to the Holy Mountain, ninety miles slightly southeast of the city of Thessaloniki. It was about as close as you could get to Mount Athos by road, as one of its ancient laws forbade “a road upon which a wheel can run” to connect it to the rest of the world. The village—whose name meant “city of the heavens”—was where pilgrims presented their required visiting permits to the Athos Bureau and waited at the edge of the sea for boat passage, inevitably staring up at the mysterious fourteenth-century Byzantine Tower of Prosforiou dominating the harbor. The Protos said he could explain it as a quick, necessary trip to the bureau office.

  Three hours later it was Andreas’ turn to sit in a room in a stranger’s house waiting for a monk to arrive. It was one of many whitewashed, red tile roof houses multiplying along the green hillsides edging the port village.

  I’m a sitting duck, Andreas thought. All alone in the middle of nowhere, waiting to show something to someone that got the last guy who tried the same thing sliced ear-to-ear. Terrific. Maggie, if your instincts were wrong—

  The front door burst opened and sunlight filled the doorway. Andreas instinctively stood up. Someone stepped inside. He couldn’t make out a face against the light, but from the eclipse the figure caused Andreas knew who it was. “Afternoon, Sergey.”

  No answer, but Andreas made out a nod. The Protos stepped out from behind him. Andreas waited until Sergey had left and closed the door, then he stepped forward and kissed the Protos’ hand. “Thank you for seeing me, Your Holiness.”

  “I understood it was important.” He seemed focused on wanting to hear what Andreas thought so serious.

  Andreas nodded. “I know you’re very busy, so let me get right to the point.” He reached under his shirt and pulled out a large manila envelope tucked flat into his pants. “No reason to attract attention.” Andreas had decided to keep any parallels to Vassilis’ fate to a minimum—and a 9mm strategically concealed in a holster over his family jewels. He pulled out two eight-by-sixteen photographs and handed them to the Protos. “Here.”

  The Protos looked quickly at one, then the other. He held one up, looked at it more closely, and handed it to Andreas. “That one was taken the day I became protos.” He studied the other for about a minute. He shrugged. “It’s a little hard to make out details, my eyes aren’t what they used to be.”

  Andreas reached into the envelope and pulled out a magnifying glass. “This should help.” Thank God for Maggie. She thought that might happen, even with the greatly enlarged photos.

  The Protos nodded thank you, and sat down on a chair by a table beneath a window draped in white lace. Andreas didn’t move. He preferred standing, watching the Protos carefully study each face.

  After five minutes or so, the Protos put down the magnifying glass and pointed to a chair next to him. “Please, my son, sit.”

  Andreas did, but on a chair on the other side of the Protos, facing the door.

  The Protos didn’t seem to care. “Where did you get these?”

  “They were on a computer flash drive Kalogeros Vassilis had hidden in a cross he was carrying when he was murdered.”

  The Protos smiled. “Ah, Vassilis, resourceful until the end. Always hiding things in the most obvious, yet overlooked, places.” He pressed his finger against the photo four times. “Just like here, I’m certain of it.”

  “What did you find?”

  “May I see the other photograph again?”

  Andreas handed it to him.

  The Protos bobbed his head through a face-by-face comparison of the photographs. “Yes, just as I thought. The faces superimposed on the abbots of the twenty monasteries attending my ceremony are of monks from those same abbots’ monasteries. But, with the exception of three who have succeeded to a
position of abbot, none of the others holds any significant hierarchical position in his monastery.”

  “What about the three new abbots? Were they important before in their monasteries?”

  The Protos paused. “No.”

  “Then how did they become abbots?”

  “The monks in their monasteries elected them.”

  “Weren’t you surprised?”

  He nodded. “As a matter of fact, yes. Our abbots are elected to serve for life, and there seemed so many more qualified, seasoned candidates available.” He shrugged. “But such is the way of democracy.”

  “How did the three they replaced die?”

  “Die? Oh no, only one died.” He spoke as if Andreas were implying they’d been murdered. “And he was very old. Another moved on to a different monastery away from Mount Athos, and the third…uhh…resigned.”

  Andreas knew from the newspapers about the third one’s resignation. He was the abbot caught up in the scandal that haunted Vassilis. “Can you think of any reason why these twenty-one men are in this photograph?” He pointed to the doctored photo.

  “I only recognize twenty faces. And I have no idea why they appear.”

  Andreas asked for the names and monasteries linked to the superimposed faces, and took great care to write them down—so as not to make completely obvious that he was recording their conversation.

  “Which face don’t you recognize?”

  He looked grim. “The face replacing mine.” He pointed to a blurred image. “It looks familiar but I can’t quite make it out. Do you have a better copy?”

  “No, it’s exactly as it appeared on the drive.”

  “Knowing Vassilis, I’m surprised he’d have made such a significant mistake.”

  “Maybe it was meant to be that way?”

  The Protos shrugged. “Perhaps.”

  “What do you make of the empty chairs and the carpet?”

  The Protos picked up the glass and looked again at the photograph. “Not much, they seem the typical gold tone and red velvet chairs so favored by our monks. It’s a style you see in almost every abbot’s office.”