The Minoan Cipher (A Matinicus “Matt” Hawkins Adventure Book 2) (19 page)

The professor brought his gaze back to the low stone platform at the summit of the hill and imagined a multi-story palace, similar except for its smaller size to the edifice at Knossos. The sound he heard in his ears was not the soughing of the wind in the stunted trees but the voices of kilted Minoans. Hundreds were gathered in the plaza before a sacrificial altar surmounted by the stone carved horns of consecration. Dancers gyrated to the piping of flutes.

The ruins only hinted at the original size of Gournia, which would have spread across what was now the E75 highway and down a valley to the port. Years of painstaking excavation would have to be done before the full extent of the city was known. The college students who sweated under the sun were enthusiastic and energetic, undaunted by the heat, dust and boredom that make up the less glamorous side of archaeology. The students had removed rectangular sections of topsoil marked out with stakes and twine in the central plaza. On most days, teams painstakingly scraped the earth with trowels while others ran shovelfuls of the loose soil through sieves that rested on four legs. The piles of earth under the sieves were high, which meant that the students had worked hard while he was in Sitia.

Vedrakis had made copies of a dozen Linear A tablet rubbings at the Sitia museum. He’d stuffed the rubbings into his briefcase along with a volume of commonly used Egyptian hieroglyphics. It was only a short while later that he was driving along the winding highway to Gournia.

He’d parked at the entrance, left the briefcase in the Land Rover and locked the car. The only thing he carried was a replica of the Phaistos disk he had acquired from the Heraklion museum gift shop. He hiked to the top of the hill.
Good
, he thought. The mournful wind blowing in from the sea would add drama to the first chapter of the book he had already started writing in his head.

He had worked out the Prologue on the drive from Sitia.

Alone amid four-thousand-year-old ruins, my only companions the ghosts haunting the remnants of this once-magnificent city, I anxiously awaited the discovery that would allow me to strip the veil off one of the most mysterious civilizations of all time.

Hawkins would arrive with the machine that would allow the translation of Linear A. Of course, he would give Hawkins credit for finding the device, but Vedrakis would quickly write him out of the narrative. He imagined himself holding the Phaistos disk high above his head to catch the rays of the setting sun.

Snap.

The noise of a breaking twig ended his literary reverie. He lowered his arms and turned around. He was no longer alone. A tall, slender figure dressed in black had emerged from behind an outcropping of rock.

The sun was setting behind the figure so the face was in shadow, but the professor could see that the man had a narrow waist and barrel chest.

“Hawkins?” Vedrakis asked.

No reply. Vedrakis frowned. This wasn’t the friendly man he’d talked to on the telephone.

Someone must have strayed through the gate he’d left open.

“This site is closed,” he said, making no attempt to disguise his annoyance. “You’ll have to leave. Come back tomorrow when you can buy a ticket.”

“When will Hawkins be here?” the man said in a deep, accented voice.

The tone was menacing. This was no tourist. Vedrakis pondered his response. Maybe he could say he didn’t know who Hawkins was, but he sensed the man would know he’d be lying. He went for a half-truth.

“I’m meeting Hawkins later at the museum in Heraklion,” Vedrakis said. “If you give me your name I’ll pass it on when I see him.”

The man ignored the offer. He moved closer.

“Give that to me,” he said.

The disk had only cost a few Euros, but Vedrakis clutched it to his chest. The man took a couple of steps forward until he was close enough for Vedrakis to see that his head was shaved and painted blue. Three other figures dressed in black emerged in the dusky light and closed in from behind and both sides. Astonishment overcame his fear.

They, too, had bald blue scalps. They wore identical jumpsuits snug to bodies that were narrow at the waist and wide at the shoulders. All four men had similar almond-shaped yellow eyes.

He realized he had seen them before, but not in real life. Surrounding him were men who seemed to have jumped off the walls of a Minoan fresco.

But these were not painted images. They were flesh and blood. And they were coming for him.

Leonidas crossed the service road and ducked behind the unoccupied ticket booth. He studied the diagram of Gournia on the fence, then took a circuitous route that led to the top of the hill.

Using bushes and rocks for cover, he made his way along the ridge until he came to the edge of the central plaza. He crossed the deserted open space and came to a boulder that stood at least ten feet high. He edged around the corner, only to pull back quickly.

Leonidas had almost stumbled into the midst of the four weird-looking guys who were holding the arms and legs of a body. He recognized the shock of white hair and beard. Vedrakis. They tossed the body off a cliff as if it were a rag doll.

Leonidas saw one of the men point at a car that had slowed at the entrance to the site and turned off the highway onto the access road.

It had to be Hawkins. Rather than trying to make a run for it, the men spread apart. They were setting up an ambush. They would allow Hawkins to enter, then close in, cutting off any escape. He didn’t know who these weirdos were, but he’d have to babysit Hawkins if he hoped to use him to get to Salazar.

Leonidas could be subtle but it wasn’t in his nature. He raised his pistol and squeezed the trigger. There was a soft
thut
and a puff of dust exploded from a waist-high rock next to one of the men who called out a warning and reached under his shirt.

He pulled out a handgun; the other men followed his lead. They stood back to back, looking in four different directions for the source of the fire.

Leonidas had moved a short distance from his original shooting position. He climbed some rocks to a position that was above the group and fired off two more rounds, aiming near the feet of his targets.

The strangers realized that they were dangerously exposed. At a word from one, who must have been the leader, they ran across the plaza. Leonidas sent a couple more rounds whizzing over their heads. He didn’t want to kill them. He was trying to herd them off the site. He emptied his pistol and slid a fresh magazine in, then followed the trail of the killers to the brow of the hill. Four figures could be seen from this viewpoint running single file along the service road. He hoped they wouldn’t double-back or reconsider their escape.

Shifting his attention to the base of the hill, Leonidas watched the Renault pull up directly behind the Land Rover.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

The shadows were creeping across the mountain peaks when Hawkins and Abby arrived at Gournia. Parking behind a Land Rover near the entrance, they got out of the car. Hawkins noticed a parking sticker for the Heraklion museum on the windshield. Looking through the window of the locked vehicle, he spotted a briefcase on the passenger seat.

“This is the professor’s car,” he said to Abby.

They pushed the gate open and entered the site. They then walked past the ticket booth and turned onto a trail that ran along the base of the hill. After a short distance, they started up an ancient stairway leading to the ridge.

About halfway to the top they heard shouts from a man standing at the base of the hill. He was waving both arms like a landing officer directing a plane on an aircraft carrier.

In a booming voice, he shouted again, “Halloo. Wait up for a minute.”

He lumbered up the stairway and was puffing like a steam locomotive when he got to where they stood.

“Good afternoon. Thanks for waiting, folks,” he said. “Whoosh. Not used to all this exertion. Out of shape.”

Abby and Hawkins exchanged glances at the statement of the obvious. “It’s a pretty steep climb,” she said.

“Maybe not for a mountain goat.” He spoke in brief shouts, as if he were talking to someone who was hard of hearing. “Got delayed on my way out here. Almost missed the road. Saw the sign. Closed. Noticed the gate was open. Saw you up on the hill. Thought I’d see what’s going on. Is the site open or not?”

“It’s closed to the public today,” Hawkins said.

“Damn. I can’t come out from Rhethymon tomorrow. Reginald Pouty’s the name.” He extended a sweaty hand and showed them his top and bottom teeth in a horsey smile. “Would it be all right if I wandered around the place? I can leave a few Euros at the ticket booth. Wouldn’t want to be a freeloader.”

Even as he shook hands with Pouty, Hawkins thought it was odd for the Englishman to show up out of nowhere. The attacks of the last few days had put him on alert. He would feel better if Pouty weren’t around and went to tell him to come back another time, but the Englishman was a looking off at a silver Mercedes traveling along the service road.

He turned back and said, “I may do this another time. Winded. This site is a disappointing, if you ask me. Not as grand as the Palace at Knossos.”

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Pouty,” Hawkins said. He was glad to see him go.

“Mutual.” The full mouth smile re-appeared. “Toodle pip.”

Moving with more athleticism than he’d shown on the climb, he quickly descended the stairway and strode toward the gate.

“Toodle pip,” Hawkins repeated in a stage British accent.

Abby shook her head. “Mad dogs and Englishmen.”

“Go out in the midday sun,” he said, finishing the Noel Coward lyric. “Since it’s not midday, we’d better get moving.”

He continued across the plaza past the excavation pits. There was no sign of Vedrakis. They took turns calling his name.

Abby stooped to examine some pieces of pottery left in a pit. Hawkins walked over to the brow of the hill. As he was about to climb onto a knob of rock for a better view, he looked down to make sure of his footing and saw the sun glinting off glass. He picked up a pair of broken eyeglass frames identical to the ones he had seen on the professor. Next to them was a fragment of pottery. He tucked both objects into his shirt pocket, then climbed onto the rock.

On the other side of the outcropping was a gully, and at the bottom of the shallow ravine was the body of a man with white hair. He lay on his back, arms and legs bent in impossible angles. Vedrakis. Hawkins climbed down into the ravine, knelt by the body and placed his fingers on the professor’s neck. The skin was warm, but there was no pulse. The eyes were wide open in a death stare.

Hawkins looked up at the outcropping silhouetted against the sky. Vedrakis could have slipped and fallen, but there was no sensible reason why he would have climbed onto the rock. The body was too far into the ravine to have fallen. He would have had to make a running leap to land in his present position.

Abby was calling his name. He gave the professor a last glance, then climbed back up. Abby had walked over to where she had last seen Hawkins and was surprised when he suddenly appeared out of nowhere.

“Had me worried for a sec,” she said. “Where were you?”

Putting his hand on her shoulder, he spoke in a soft voice, “Abby, I want you to listen to me. I found the professor. He’s dead. His body is at the bottom of the ravine behind me. I think he’s been murdered.”

“Who—?”

“Don’t know. I’m wondering if that English tourist might have something to do with it. We can talk after we get away from here.”

Abby nodded. “I saw a path that will take us directly down to the gate.”

The trail led down, past some Minoan tombs, then around to the front of the ticket booth. Hawkins handed his backpack to Abby and asked her to start the Renault’s engine. He found a rock the size of a cabbage and smashed a hole in the passenger window of the Land Rover. Reaching in, he quickly unlocked the door and grabbed the briefcase.

Sliding into the passenger seat beside Abby, Hawkins buckled up and placed the briefcase on his lap.

“Maybe there’s something in here that explains why the professor is dead. I’ll check it out while you drive.”

Abby dropped the transmission into low and accelerated, then spun the car around in a cloud of dust and headed back to the highway.

“Nice move,” Hawkins said in admiration.

“I learned the reverse spin-out on the first day of my evasive driving course.” They were coming up on the highway.

“Where to?” she said.

Hawkins had driven the coastal road on his last visit to Crete and knew that the mountainous countryside to the east had more goats than people.

“Go back to Heraklion. We need to tell the police about the professor.”

Abby kicked the Renault up to seventy miles per hour. Traffic was light; they would be back in the city in less than an hour. Hawkins pushed the latch on the unlocked briefcase, reached inside and came out with the rubbings. He held a sheet of paper up for Abby to see.

“The professor said he was bringing along some Minoan inscriptions.”