An Aegean Prophecy (14 page)

‘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.

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.’