Everyone's Dead But Us (23 page)

Dimitri Thasos stumbled on the stairs, fell into the room, and landed on his knees. He stared at the three of them. I don’t ever expect to see a more ghastly image than the burned and disfigured face he presented to us at that moment. He said, “I will hate you forever.” He had a gun in his trembling hand.

For several seconds no one moved. His visage held everyone motionless. His wounds gaped and oozed. He was wet from the rain. For several seconds more the gun swayed from side to side, at times being aimed at us. As he swung it one last time toward them, he began firing. Gavin and Crushton were nearest in the line of fire. They went down in the first volleys. Screams and deafening gunfire filled the room.

Scott and I dove for Movado. I almost passed out when I put pressure on my ankle. Movado fired at Thasos and then began to turn the gun toward us. Scott managed to knock him off balance. Movado fired a shot toward Scott then several toward Thasos who was still on his knees and firing. I was on the floor. I picked up Movado’s leg and threw him against a wall. His head bashed into the side of a table. Thasos fired until his gun was empty. The noise in this confined space was mind numbing. Movado’s screams added to the din. His gun skittered away. I picked it up and held it on him. Thasos fell into a heap.

I checked Scott. He was dazed but unhurt. “What the hell happened?” he asked.

I looked at Movado. I could see blood pooling on the front of his sweatshirt and on his pants legs. He had his eyes open and was glaring at me. He kept trying to get up. I kept the gun aimed at him. I said, “If you move, I will kill you.”

He nodded weakly. I gave Scott one of the guns that Gavin or Crushton had been holding. I checked them. They were both dead. I was sickened by the carnage. But to be honest, I was forced to suppress a feeling of elation that I was going to make it, and they weren’t. They’d killed a lot of innocent people. Being rich isn’t an actionable offense. Disagreeing with someone’s political philosophy has gotten millions killed over the millennia, but this was stupid and pointless. I know it might not have been that from their perspective, but I didn’t care about their perspective.

I hurried to Thasos. He now had a gunshot wound to add to his burns. They’d gotten him in the left shoulder. He was breathing and unconscious. The new wound wasn’t bleeding badly. I ripped off Crushton’s sweatshirt and tied up Thasos’s wound as best I could. I made Thasos as comfortable as I could and covered him with a part of what I was sure was a valuable antique throw rug.

I turned to Movado.

He gasped and tried to draw breaths. I hated him, but his face was gray sickening to green. He said, “I think I’m going to die.” Gently, I propped him up.

I said, “Since you’ve wrecked everything, you’ll have to wait with everyone else for help to arrive. You could tell us where your secret electronics room is so we could call your admiral buddy. It could save your life.”

He looked at the blood on his hands that had been covering his wounds. He nodded. He gave us directions to a room under Apritzi House.

Scott said, “Is it sabotaged?”

“It can’t be. I was going to use it. I’m the only one currently alive who knows where it is.”

Scott left to try.

“Satisfy my curiosity” I said. “What the hell is really going on?”

His breathing was labored, but he was lucid. He said, “The island is losing money. We can’t sustain it as a resort. Pampering the rich isn’t cheap. I lost a ton of money in the stock market. Henry Tudor would not listen to reason. Several of us planned a way to make money. We’d have been able to trade the valuable treasures here into ready cash. We wouldn’t dump everything on the market. It would make everyone too suspicious. O’Quinn was another problem. O’Quinn was not officially going to be the inheritor until tomorrow. He and Henry had business dealings. Henry was starting to mistrust me. O’Quinn offered some cash to help out, but as payback, he was forcing Henry to change his will. I was the inheritor before O’Quinn horned in. Henry was looking to double-cross me.”

“Owning half the gay bars on Manhattan wasn’t enough?”

He stopped to draw labored breaths for three or four minutes then resumed. “It’s all about power and influence. I needed money. Tudor wouldn’t agree to sell a scrap of the secret stuff to help me. I think he was planning to help himself. He was considering selling some of the real stuff in the Great Hall. He also refused on the Minoan artifacts. Derek Harris also wanted money. He was a naive sports geek. His agent was ripping him off. Tudor was smitten with the silly creep. Tudor wanted to let Harris into the treasure room. That’s absurd. A few endorsement deals for a few million do not qualify you for entrance to our oldest rituals. What was worse, the cover of supplying a conduit for looted Nazi art being returned was wearing thin. Henry had no sense of how to work a scam on an international basis. We’d actually sold one or two of the smaller things from around the island.”

“How did the scam work?”

“O’Quinn would crate stuff up here that wasn’t the stolen stuff. You make the packages a little larger than they needed to be. You have a legitimate place to send it. Off it goes, and you’re home free.”

“You were sending out real art, inside of which you put stolen art.”

“Yes. It was a great conduit to the continent. At the same time, to acquire valuable works stolen on the continent, we made ourselves known as one of the possible buyers. That goes back over one hundred years. Obviously somebody is paying for and displaying all these stunningly valuable artworks, why not us? We weren’t the only ones. We aren’t monsters.”

“You aren’t unique monsters,” I said, “but I’m not sure others would murder this many people to make a few bucks.”

“Straight people have murdered far more people for far less money.” He grimaced in pain. “You aren’t making this easier.”

I said, “You have murdered people, you unconscionable piece of shit. Easier or harder isn’t my choice for you at this moment. This isn’t a video game and you aren’t a teenager who can kill and resurrect players thousands of times.”

He winced. “You want explanations or you want to be self-righteous?”

I leaned back and listened. I kept the gun handy but far out of his reach.

Movado said, “You’re right. We aren’t unique. But we did not collaborate with the Nazis. That part of what we did was real. We got a lot of stolen art and other treasures back to their real owners.”

I said, “Give him back his twenty-five cents and tell him to go to hell.”

It was a tagline to an old joke about a man trying to get into heaven. Saint Peter asked the person applying for entrance into heaven if he’d ever done the slightest bit of good for his fellow men. The man could think of nothing except having once given a quarter to a beggar. Saint Peter consulted God on what to do with the man, and God gave the answer.

“You killed so many,” I said.

“That was your fault. You two kept sticking your noses in. We might not have had to kill everyone.” He breathed deeply. “I suppose we would have killed them all anyway.” A bit of honesty near the end.

“How come you passed out when we found Virl Morgan’s body?”

“I didn’t expect his body to be there. Crushton knew the room was here. He was lying to me and to you. He told Gavin. It was a message to me.”

“How could Deplonte have known Tudor was going to be killed? Why’d he go out that night?”

“Crushton and I, planning separately, had decided to kill Tudor that night. Deplonte was on the side of the conspirators who needed money. He thought I did it. He didn’t know Crushton actually had.”

“How’d you get the art out of here?”

“We used the last pedicar after McCue fixed it. Fitzgerald, Seymour, and Klimpton helped move all of it. After we didn’t need it anymore we sent the car careening down on you. It might not kill you, but it might. It would at least scare you. When the artwork was done being moved, the rest of them had to die. I couldn’t have that many people know about the new hiding place.” He jerked his head toward Crushton and Gavin. “Those two were going to die after you did. They were more of a pain in the neck than anything. When Crushton killed Henry, it made things a little easier for me and the explosion was a great cover. You were right. My admiral friend would save me. Adding them would be too much. They had to die.”

“Whoever helped had to die?”

“Yes. You two were the problem. I never counted you in the mix. It was Crushton’s idea to kill Tudor in your room. He thought you’d be most likely to be suspects. You two never stopped and never gave up.” His breathing was worse. The pool of blood around him had widened considerably. I’d tried putting pressure on the wounds using my shirt. Nothing had helped. Movado said, “I don’t feel well.”

I asked, “Why drag us to the treasure room to kill us?”

“Where you died didn’t make much difference. I needed to catch Gavin and Crushton at a perfect moment and kill them. Like I cared about their stupid causes. They were useful to me. Then they weren’t anymore. If I could be the first one up the stairs from the treasure room after you were dead, I’d be able to drop them one at a time.”

“You took a chance.”

“One of many.” He sighed. “I wish I’d been able to pitch you both over that parapet into the sea.”

What do you say to someone who is obviously dying, certainly on his way to hell, if there was a hell, and who tried to kill you and your lover? I was alive. Scott was okay. We’d won. While I was not about to dance on this man’s grave, it wasn’t as if I wouldn’t be tempted.

Blood continued to seep from his wounds. He shut his eyes and breathed deeply for several minutes. Movado said, “You’ll never find the treasures. I hid them. Only I know of the secret room they are in. No one else alive does. Only me.” He gasped for breath, pulled his arms close around himself, and slid onto his side. I was wary for a moment that he was faking, but then he was silent. He was dead.

Scott and I shivered in the lee of the castle. It was hours later. My ankle throbbed. I was cold, wet, and hungry. It seemed like I’d been that way since forever not just two days. We were safe, but not by much. We had been on the pier to greet the first boat of replacement help to arrive from Santorini. Scott had tried the electronics in the room Movado had given us directions to. The only difference Scott had managed to make was that on the first boat over from Santorini, they sent some police officers.

For the first hour or so, we’d sat in the warm main cabin of the boat. We had toweled off, were given changes of clothes, and felt warm for the first time in days. The rate at which emergency personnel were beginning to show up was reasonably comforting.

Now we were outside the castle waiting for cops to do what cops do when great carnage has occurred. The rain had become an annoying mist, driven by a gusting wind. It was finding its way past the little bit of warmth we’d had in the boat.

After being interrogated on the boat, we’d been taken around to different parts of the island and asked for explanations. At the moment we’d been left waiting outside the castle.

Thasos was receiving medical attention. Scott had been looked at, stitched up, and been given pills. I was sore in a lot of places but reasonably okay.

Inspector Krinidatis spoke passable English although he kept an interpreter with him. As soon as the electricity was fixed and all electronic communications were restored, we called our lawyer in the States and the nearest American consulate.

We talked to the police at length. We’d told them about the artwork. Krinidatis seemed mostly neutral. He didn’t rant. He asked sensible questions, some of which were designed to ensure that we were not the killers. That it was logical that he had to make sure we weren’t murderers was not as comforting a bit of logic as I would have liked. Luckily, our stories checked out.

Now, after several hours, Inspector Krinidatis rejoined us and we all returned to the main cabin of the boat.

I asked, “How is Dimitri?” Thasos had been taken by helicopter to Santorini.

“Not well. Fortunately, for you, in his lucid moments, he defends you and says to trust you. We knew he was an investigator. I’ve spoken with him several times.”

I nodded. I knew this was going to be a difficult situation.

Krinidatis said, “We found Bobby Fiege’s body. It was at a console in an electronics room in Henry Tudor’s villa. It looked like someone had rigged the equipment so that the next person who used it would be electrocuted.”

I said, “These people are nuts.”

Krinidatis tapped his fingertips on the table between us. He said, “There’s no artwork.”

“None?” I said. “There’s got to be. We saw it. There was nobody else on the island. There was no way off.”

Krinidatis said, “There are only a few options. Either you were hallucinating, you’re lying about the artwork, it is hidden somewhere again, or there was someone on the island besides you three and that someone had some means of getting off the island with all the artwork.”

“How?” Scott asked. “He’d need a crew. He’d need a large boat. We’d have seen it if it had come in at the pier. The castle bay isn’t big enough for a ship large enough to navigate the storm and there’s no other ingress to the island.”

I said, “It’s still hidden somewhere.” I reiterated what Movado had told me at the end.

“We’ve searched thoroughly. I suppose it could be buried in some cache on the island, but the dirt covering it would look freshly dug.”

I said, “There was a hidden room in the castle. Nobody had found it for centuries. Maybe there are more hidden rooms there or in other buildings. This place has been inhabited for thousands of years. We’ve been shown tunnels. Scott used a secret electronics room.”

Krinidatis said, “I have had the assistance of the Greek army. There were too many dead bodies for our local police. We have looked everywhere possible.”

The gay owners had also had over a century to devise clever hiding places. I let that drop and asked, “How about the airfield? Maybe a fleet of helicopters?”

Scott said, “You’d think we’d have heard or seen something.”

We stared at Krinidatis who remained silent. Finally, I said, “We weren’t hallucinating or lying.”

“Then it’s all gone.”

Hours later we went out to the quayside to wait for a boat to finish docking. It was a police cruiser that would take us to Santorini and then we’d begin the long flights home. Scott pointed to several figures on the deck. I could see Craveté, McCue, Oser, and Tudor’s valet, the ones who had been on the boat with Gavin. After they docked and came ashore, Craveté gave us a big hug.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Gavin tried to kill us,” Craveté said. “She sabotaged the boat. She did a pretty good job. We managed to keep it afloat for a short time after she left. The engine was dead.”

“Where’s Bracken?” I asked.

“She pushed him over the side,” McCue said. “We tried to save him, but we were taking on water.”

I said, “She told us the boat went down.”

“It did,” Oser said. “After it capsized, we clung to the hull. If the storm had still been raging, we’d be dead. As it is, we’re just wet. Is what the police told us true?”

We told them what had happened. Scott did most of the talking. I just wanted to get the hell away. They hadn’t been in on the killing. The police had questioned them. It seemed by telling the truth, they’d inadvertently backed up our stories. A little luck there.

Packing for home had been the simplest in my memory. We got gym bags from the gift shop on the island. The bags were made of Egyptian long-staple cotton. Why wouldn’t they be the best? They gave them to us. Scott and I also grabbed razors, shaving cream, toothpaste, toothbrushes, deodorant, and changes of underwear.

As far as I could find out, for the first time in over a hundred years the Greek government would be taking over control of the island. Who precisely owned it wasn’t clear. I was sure the legal claims would keep lawyers in cash for years. There was talk of doing some archeological excavations. Maybe they would find all the great artworks that were missing. None of the officials reported them to the press. They’d been missing for centuries. I had no intention of devoting my life to digging around a rocky island in the middle of the sea.

As we left, the sky was gray. The rain had stopped. The wind was down, and it was blessedly quiet. We wore heavy parkas the police had provided. We could see security guards at numerous points around the island.

Scott and I talked on the stern of the boat as its engines revved up. I said, “You know, something is not right about all this.”

“What’s that?” Scott asked.

“Those artworks didn’t just disappear.”

“Not enough magic around for that.”

“There was nobody else on this island. They’d have been noticed or found out. There were too many people running around. You’d think the killers would have noticed.”

“They could have been lying,” Scott suggested.

“Obviously Movado was double-crossing the other two. Movado told me there was a new hiding place. They were practically the last words he said.”

“It’s a big damn island.” Scott looked at me. “Okay, the island itself isn’t that big, but it’s a hell of a lot more area than a private home. Movado must know all of its secrets. Certainly, more of its secrets than we know. If they find all that stuff today or tomorrow, who cares? Not me. I wouldn’t take it even if someone offered to give it to me. I’m happy to get out of this alive.”

I said, “Maybe there were more secret rooms in the castle.” “You really want to waste time speculating?” he asked. “I guess not.” I did love puzzles, but not that much. The boat began to pull away.