by K. T. Tomb
“Danna.” The young lady in her late teens let the word slip from her mouth as though she was calling up toward the loft, but jumped back with a start when she saw Edwin and Danna so close to her.
There was a frozen moment while all three minds sorted through the situation and then began to relax again. With a nervous giggle, Danna responded to the teen. “Iantha.”
“You startled me,” Iantha giggled, holding her hand to her chest.
“You startled us,” Edwin responded, releasing his grip on the pistol.
“Mother wants me to invite you to come make lunch with us. You said you had always wanted to learn Greek cooking.”
“Well, I certainly would like to, but…” She paused and looked at Edwin.
She could use something, anything to help get her mind off of Pandora’s Box and the robbery. Deeper thoughts about how the news of their deaths were affecting their family and friends also plagued her. It seemed they were in a race against time and she wasn’t sure that she could be spared.
“Go ahead, love,” Edwin smiled. “We both need to get some space from this.”
“You can come too if you like, Mr. Douglas,” Iantha beamed.
“Actually, I was looking forward to a stroll in the vineyard if it’s all the same to you, young lady.”
“We ladies wouldn’t want you spoiling our fun anyway,” Danna responded, linking arms with Iantha. “Come on; let’s leave this boring old man to his stroll.”
Edwin followed them through the door and watched them as they, more or less, skipped toward the main house. About halfway there, Danna called out over her shoulder.
“Don’t forget your cane.”
“I love you too,” he called out.
The two of them disappeared into the house and he made his way toward the vineyard. Where he’d enjoyed the salty breezes from the balconies in Athens in Corinth, they paled in comparison to the sweet breezes that flowed down off of the mountains and across the vineyards. Though it was still several weeks before the first cluster of grapes would ripen and the harvest could begin, the sweet smell on the breeze was already foretelling that day’s arrival.
He strolled along between two rows of vines on his way to a vantage point that he and Danna had discovered at sunset a few nights before. When he reached the end of the row, he turned to his right and strolled to the top of a small knoll where a rustic, wooden bench had been crafted to sit across two old stumps. Though he’d done plenty of sitting, he couldn’t resist the old bench.
Gazing out across the orchards and vineyards to the west, he could make out the winding path of Alfios Potamos on the distant floor of the valley and the rise where, he’d been told by their host, the site of the first Olympic games had taken place near the temple of Zeus in the ancient city of Olympia. It had fascinated him to be sitting so close to a place where such a monumental event had first begun, and, in many ways, it also seemed completely unreal.
“Enjoying a little fresh air and the view?” a voice from behind him asked, giving him a start.
Instinctively, Edwin reached for the pistol grip but then relaxed as he saw the old man, ironically using a cane to balance himself and picking his way carefully toward him over the uneven ground. He hadn’t seen the man around the farm before, but they hadn’t been there many days and didn’t know everyone who might be a part of it. He stood up.
“Relax,” the old man chuckled. “I’ve been making my way over this land for years; some say centuries.”
Edwin had intended to assist him when he’d seen the man’s frail state, but simply stepped out of his way and allowed the man to make his way to the bench. He waited until the man sat down before sitting beside him.
“Edwin Douglas,” he said, extending his hand toward the old man.
“Laertes,” the old man responded, taking his hand.
Edwin held back a chuckle as he recognized the name from Shakespeare’s play.
“I heard that you were here, but this is the first time that I’ve had a chance to meet you,” the old man said.
“I didn’t realize that I’d become famous,” Edwin replied.
“There isn’t a lot of action around here. When a stranger is taken in, that stranger becomes famous. So, what is it that you, and that stunning creature who accompanies you, are doing here?”
“Seeing Greece, mostly, but also trying to solve a riddle.” He hadn’t meant to bring it up and wished that he hadn’t, but it had already slipped out.
“I love a good riddle,” the old man laughed. “How about I tell you one and then you can share yours with me?”
“It’s a deal,” Edwin agreed, already feeling the weight being lifted from his shoulders and carried off on the sweet mountain breeze.
“If witches come in darkened cloak and plunder the riches of common folk, and then run off laughing with what they’ve sought, where would they hide what they got?”
Edwin considered the riddle for several moments. There simply wasn’t enough to go on. In fact, it was a horrible riddle with no solution to it.
“It’s impossible to solve,” Edwin protested.
“Well, then, I guess you won’t be able to share your riddle with me,” the old man laughed, stood from the bench and started to pick his way back over the rough terrain toward where he’d emerged from the vineyard.
Edwin wrinkled his brow and looked after the old man, still running the riddle through his head. Once he was adjacent to the vineyard, the old man stopped and turned back toward him. He caught Edwin’s eyes and nodded toward the north. “Perhaps you should consult the Oracle of Kryoneri.”
Edwin turned his eyes in the direction the old man had indicated and repeated what the old man had said. “Consult the Oracle of Kryoneri?”
When he looked back toward the old man, he was no longer there.
Chapter Twenty-one
“It is impossible that he could have disappeared into the vineyard so quickly, I tell you,” Edwin explained to Danna a few hours later. “The old man had a cane, could barely shuffle along, and then he simply disappeared. I hurried down to where I’d last seen him, assuming that he’d gone into the vineyard and I’d missed him, but he wasn’t in the vineyard between the rows. He was gone; vanished.”
“I think you’ve finally lost your mind,” Danna sympathized. “We’ve been pouring over this case for so long and with such intensity that you’re beginning to hallucinate.”
“I knew you would say that,” he replied. “But I wasn’t hallucinating. I really saw him, shook his hand and even spoke to him. I know I did.”
“And yet no one has heard of an old man called Laertes from around here.” She snapped her fingers as something came to her. “Wasn’t he the one who killed Hamlet? His name was taken from The Odyssey, Odysseus’ own father, right?”
“I believe that you are beginning to mock me,” he groused, but as he said it, another thought began to take root. “Odysseus, The Odyssey. That’s it!”
“What’s it?”
“We are in Greece after all,” he chuckled. “I ought to have expected it.”
“What is going on in that warped accountant mind of yours?”
It took a moment for him to bring the whole idea together in his head. “He didn’t tell me his riddle, he told me mine.”
“Edwin!” Danna snapped. “Slow down and explain what you’re talking about.”
“You remember how Athena would show up disguised as Mentor in order to direct Odysseus or Telemachus, right?”
“That was an epic story, Edwin. The first great action-adventure novel. You can’t seriously be thinking that Athena or any other of the gods appeared to you as a guide.”
“Why not? We’re trying to find a mythical box, aren’t we?”
Danna had no response, so Edwin pressed on.
“Listen to his riddle,” he said, his eyes wide with excitement. “It makes no sense by itself, but when you put it with the robbery, it is all too clear.”
“Fine,” she
sighed. “Tell me the riddle.”
“If witches come in darkened cloak and plunder the riches of common folk, and then run off laughing with what they’ve sought, where would they hide what they got?”
“It’s senseless jargon,” Danna protested.
“Take it apart for a moment. Dark cloaked thieves who made some believe that they were witches. They plundered a museum of the Greek Commonwealth, the common folk, where would they hide what they got?”
“Suppose that is what he was talking about,” Danna answered, rolling her eyes, unable to believe that she was entertaining his crazy notion. “There are no answers or clues to help you in that riddle.”
“Exactly!” Edwin exclaimed. “I brought up the same point and all he said was that since I couldn’t solve his riddle, he wouldn’t hear mine and then he stood up to leave.”
“I’m completely lost as to why you think this is a breakthrough,” she replied.
“It’s a breakthrough, because he turned back to me just before he disappeared, nodded toward the mountains and told me to consult the Oracle of Kryoneri.”
Danna shrugged.
“Remember my theory that they didn’t go back to Pyrgos and that they hid the box in the mountains?”
“Yeah, you have no evidence to support it, but okay.”
“Kryoneri is a village in the mountains to the north of here.”
“I guess it’s something.” Her tone was dripping with doubt. “Are you sure you didn’t just pull this out of your own, overworked imagination?”
“Have you ever known me to be anything but steady and clear-headed?”
“No, but everyone reaches their limit.”
“Trust me on this, love,” he whispered, looking deep into her eyes. “We need to go to Olympia tomorrow and we need to follow up on this.”
“Okay,” she smiled. “It will be a chance to do something different and clear our heads, but I truly doubt that we’ve found a solid lead here, love.”
Edwin accepted her doubt but was also encouraged by the fact that she was, at the very least, willing to accompany him in checking things out. He slept fitfully through the night, not able to let go of the idea that he might have, finally, come across the break that they had needed. It came in a rather odd way, but they were, after all, in Greece and stranger things had happened throughout Hellenistic history.
Having caught a ride with a neighboring farmer, by mid-morning, Edwin and Danna were pouring through ancient maps in the archives of the Olympia Archaeological Museum. They wouldn’t have been able to gain access to that particular part of the museum if it hadn’t been for the well-worn, government-issued ID card that Danna had been issued by Taavi Marinos under the authority of the Greek government several years before.
“We’re looking for Kryoneri and the Oracle of Kryoneri,” she mused, delicately handling the maps in search of anything that was related to an Oracle associated with the village of Kryoneri. “I’m not finding anything.”
“Keep looking,” Edwin said. “Stone, pillar, temple, cave, anything.”
“Nothing,” she replied after another 30 minutes hadn’t turned up even the hint of an Oracle, though she had discovered that the village of Kryoneri had existed for a very, very long time.
Edwin, who had been pouring through texts and having the same kind of luck. He closed the last one and sat quietly staring at the wall in front of him.
“You okay, Edwin?”
“I’m just sorting through this.”
“Let’s face it, love,” she said, moving over to him and massaging the tense muscles of his shoulders. “We’ve hit another dead end.”
“Hmmm,” he replied, closing his eyes and enjoying the feel of her hands on his aching muscles. The instant he relaxed, his brain kicked in once more and his eyes snapped open. “There is no Oracle of Kryoneri.”
“I think we’ve established that,” Danna replied. “But why are you so excited about it?”
“Because it was told as part of the riddle and not as the solution,” he laughed, scrambling up out of his chair.
“Whew,” Danna responded. “You’re leaving me way behind on this one, Edwin.”
“Well, then,” he laughed while taking her hand and dragging her toward the archives’ door. “Hurry up and get a move on.”
“Where are we going?” she asked as they slipped through the door and out into the hall.
“Kryoneri,” he replied.
Neither of them had any idea that they had been recognized as they started out of the museum.
Chapter Twenty-two
Andriy was at his wit’s end. He had struggled to see every possible angle that had been brought out in the case files that he’d been studying. He’d even been able to wrap his mind around the idea of the government/evil spirit theory and come up with some possible leads, which might logically follow out of it, but he’d come up short even in those clues.
The trip to Olympia Museum had been as much to serve the purpose of clearing his head, as it had been to get a feel for the physical layout of the robbery site. It had been his hope that he might find some subtle clue that the police had missed almost 40 years earlier. It was a long shot, for sure, but fortune favored the diligent and the thorough. Visiting the site of the robbery was being both diligent and thorough.
He strolled along with his head down, deep in thought and ignoring Demitri and Cy, who were with him for no particular purpose, except Cy, who had driven the car.
“Wait!” Cy barked, throwing his hand across Andriy’s chest and drawing him up short.
Andriy slapped his hand away and glared at him. Cy’s complexion had turned pale and he was staring straight ahead.
“What? What’s wrong?”
Cy pointed. “Isn’t that Douglas and Sharma?”
Andriy followed the direction of Cy’s extended arm and finger. There was no mistaking them. He recognized them instantly.
“Yes,” he replied with a snarl, turning toward Demitri. “That is our dead couple and they are holding to a rapid pace, considering their condition.”
Fortune has arrived.
“We will kill them ourselves, then,” Demitri said, preparing to go in pursuit.
“No.” Andriy stuck out his hand in a similar manner that Cy had earlier and held Demitri back. “Let’s try something different.”
“Something different?” Demitri asked. Both Demitri’s brow and that of Cy were wrinkled with a confused expression.
“We have no leads,” he replied. “Perhaps they do. We’ll keep out of sight and follow them. Unless I am mistaken, our luck has just changed.”
He had recognized purposeful eagerness and excitement in the pair as they had hurried out of the museum and sought out the person who had, evidently, given them a ride from wherever they had been hiding. The scene wasn’t unlike an eager hound begging its master to follow him. After what had been a painful period of time when Andriy was certain that they would be discovered by the man and woman, their driver finally consented to their request and they had gotten into the car.
There had been another tense moment after he, Cy and Demitri had rushed to their car while trying to keep track of where the couple had gone. In fact, for a few moments, they had all become certain that their cover had been blown and Douglas and Sharma had vanished. Good fortune continued to turn for them, however, and they soon spotted the car that was carrying their quarry as it made a turn onto a less frequented route that led toward the mountains in the north.
Was that where the couple was hiding or had they figured out where the box was? Regardless, Andriy, Demitri and Cy were going to continue to follow them until they led them to what he and the Hammer sought.
The car in front of them kept up a steady pace on the route which led through Platanos and then into Pelopio, where they nearly disappeared again when nobody in the trailing car had seen them turn off onto an intersecting highway off to the right. Had Andriy’s eyes not wandered a bit, he wouldn’t have seen the littl
e car as it wound its way up a set of switchbacks above them.
Back on the proper route, Cy had remained more diligent with his driving and didn’t allow himself to fall back nearly as far as he had before. It mattered little since the route began to resemble tangled up worms as it worked its way into the mountains.
They passed through Kafkonia and the road signs had indicated they were en route toward another village called Chelidoni. Then, the car in front of them turned off once more and started in the direction of another village called Kryoneri. When they reached the village of Kryoneri, the car with Douglas and Sharma slowed considerably and Andriy could make out their silhouettes leaning in various directions and straining to for a better view, as though they were looking for something.
“We’d better pull over and wait for them to make up their minds where they are going or we’ll get too close and be discovered,” Andriy advised.
“As you wish,” Cy responded, pulling over to the curb and waiting, though keeping his eyes focused on the car that they’d been tailing.
Several times, they had eased forward when the car in front of them had gotten beyond their view or turned off onto a side street, but as soon as they had the car in view again, Cy had pulled over to the curb and waited. Andriy prayed that no one would notice them and become suspicious.
Andriy had mixed emotions when the car pulled onto what amounted to little more than a goat trail and started up a valley, winding its way slowly up the mountain. If they continued tailing the couple, they’d be discovered, but if they didn’t, they might lose them. Advising Cy, with the extra motivation of the pistol in his lap if he didn’t perform to perfection, they continued to follow until they saw the car stop. The couple climbed out and started up a steep, hillside trail.
Luckily, Douglas and Sharma had been so engrossed in conversation as they quit the car, they did not notice that they had been followed.