Valley of Thracians (29 page)

There was also one bureaucratic errand
they had to handle before their journey home. Scott didn’t have a valid
passport. His old one, discovered at the Black Sea hotel, had expired. They needed
to visit the embassy to fill out the necessary paperwork for a new one before
finalizing flight arrangements. The Americans would be curious about Scott’s
whereabouts over the past years. Simon hoped there wouldn’t be too much
time-consuming red tape in the process.

He didn’t care about the missing
Thracian treasure. Why did finding it matter to Scott so much? Why couldn’t the
boy forget about it and just hurry back to his parents? Simon saw that he had a
serious impediment ahead of him. He wasn’t sure how he could convince his
headstrong grandson to accept his family’s demand that he board the first
flight home.

“We have to leave now!”

 
Simon and Scott looked up in surprise as
Sophia approached the table quickly, her eyes wide and serious.

“What’s going on?” Simon asked her.

“There are men in the lobby looking for
you!”

“Maybe they’re from the embassy?”

“No, these are not that kind of men.
Come on!”

Simon slapped a few Bulgarian bills down
on the table and rose to his feet. Hearing the urgency in Sophia’s plea, he
followed his grandson and her to the restaurant’s back door without another
word. They slipped out to the patio and the city park beyond just as the men in
dark suits entered the restaurant and began to scrutinize the faces of the
diners sitting at the tables.

Chapter
50

“So, let me get this straight. You’re
being pursued by strange, well-dressed men without knowing the reason why, and
you’re not interested in our protection? Somehow, none of this makes sense.”

Simon smiled again at Thompson, the
deputy consul at the embassy. How could he explain what was going on, without
revealing what was actually going on?

“Maybe I’ve made it all seem too
dramatic,” he said, trying to backtrack from his earlier statements. “The
important thing is to arrange Scott’s new passport so that we’ll be able to
book our flights.”

Simon smiled at his grandson, sitting
next to him at the table in the brightly lit office. He was eager to wrap up
the bureaucratic paperwork and leave the embassy. There were so many phone
calls he wanted to make before they left. All of them would relay the happy
news of his having found his grandson. He just worried that he had told
Thompson too much and that this would prolong the procedures.

They had arrived at the embassy after
having spent the night at Sophia’s apartment in the center of the city. There
had been no time to check out of the hotel or to retrieve his personal
belongings, so they stopped in at a neighborhood pharmacy to purchase
toothbrushes and a few other essentials. Simon planned to stop by the Hilton
afterward to settle his bill, and hopefully they would be able to book a flight
and leave right away.

At first, Thompson couldn’t believe it
when a clerk informed him that Simon was waiting to meet him and was
accompanied by his grandson Scott, whose disappearance three years before had
been written off as an unsolved mystery. The deputy consul walked into the room
with an incredulous look on his face, eager to see if what he had heard was
true.

“We looked everywhere for Scott, and now
after you’ve been here for just a short time, you’ve managed to find him,”
Thompson said. “I can’t imagine how happy you must be. Your whole family must
be ecstatic. Scott, are you sure you’re all right? That wound on your head
looks pretty bad. How exactly were you injured?”

“I must have fallen,” Scott said,
searching for the words. “I suffered a bad case of amnesia, so I’m not really
sure what happened.”

“Your passport was discovered at a
resort hotel in Golden Sands. Do you have any recollection of visiting there?”

“That part of my past is completely
blank, a total mystery to me.” Scott shrugged his shoulders. No need to tell
the American official anything more than what was absolutely necessary.

But of course Simon had recently blurted
out a report of the incident at the hotel restaurant the previous night. This
resulted in Scott casting a stern glance at his grandfather and renewed
interest by the American official.

“Why would they be looking for you?”
Thompson asked again. “It’s obvious that the two of you are in need of our
protection. I can arrange for you to stay in a safe house until your flight
back to the States.”

“We are staying in a safe house,” Simon
replied quickly, causing Scott to frown at him. “I mean, we’re staying with
friends. No need for the embassy to worry about us. I’m sure I was mistaken.
Those men weren’t really looking for us, nor did they mean us any harm. Sorry
if I sounded like an alarmist. Please, can we have Scott’s new passport so that
we can go?”

Thompson cleared his throat and shuffled
a pile of papers on the table. “There are some formalities we need to handle,”
he began. “Forms have to be sent to the States, official documents must be
cleared. It’s not every day that someone comes back from being presumed dead and
requests a new passport. I believe we can have it ready for Scott, let’s see,
by Tuesday.”

“Tuesday!”
Simon exclaimed. “We were planning to leave before the weekend.”

“I will have to consult with our legal
department. Unfortunately, I doubt we can move this through the pipeline any
quicker than Tuesday.”

“No, that is unacceptable,” Simon said,
rising from his seat. “It is unacceptable that you can’t arrange for us to be
on the next flight out of Sofia.”

“Grandpa, it’s okay,” Scott whispered.

“There’s something I must explain,
Scott,” Thompson said, clearing his throat again. “Without a passport, you are
basically in Bulgaria without permission. You have overstayed your visa, and
the local authorities will not agree to your being here without our official
intervention on your behalf. Therefore I must insist that you stay put in
Sofia. Again, I strongly suggest that you stay in our safe house. On behalf of
the American government, I assure you that we will do our utmost to protect
you.”

A short time later they were on the
street, waiting to hail a taxi. Simon was glad to get out of the embassy yet
upset that Thompson had not been more helpful. In the distance, the imposing
mass of Vitosha—the mountain massif visible from nearly every part of Sofia—was
brightly lit by the morning sunlight.

“They do their utmost to protect you,”
he said sarcastically. “Where were they for the past three years when you were
missing?”

“Grandpa, leave it,” Scott said.
“They’re just doing their jobs. The important thing is that soon I’ll get a new
passport. We can book our flights for Tuesday afternoon. Don’t worry, Grandpa.
I’m going home.”

Sophia had gone to the university that
morning to attend to some of the workload left untouched while she escorted
Simon on his journey to Belogradchik. When she returned to her apartment in the
late afternoon, she found Simon and Scott already there after having checked
out of the Hilton and retrieving Simon’s belongings.

“Are you sure it’s no problem if we stay
here?” Simon asked her again as she set about making them tea.

“No problem at all. I insist,” she told
them. “What have the two of you come up with? Scott, did you read through all
of Lance’s emails? Did he leave any other clues as to where he had taken the
gym bag?”

“No additional clues,” Scott said,
sinking deeply into the lumpy brown sofa that took up much of Sophia’s modest
living room. “I read through all of my old emails, from Lance and from everyone
else. It was strange to see that many of my old friends kept writing long after
I was presumed dead.
Touching, in fact.
Anyway, I read
all of my old email from Lance, and besides that puzzling message stating that
the bag was well-hidden in one of our favorite spots, there was nothing else.”

“So, what are we going to do?” Simon
wondered.

“It’s obvious,” Sophia said, serving him
his tea and then holding an empty cup out to Scott, who shook his head in
refusal of the offer. “We start visiting Scott’s favorite places in Bulgaria
until we find where Lance hid the bag.”

Scott immediately perked up at the
suggestion, but Simon looked dismayed. “Why are you suggesting that?” he asked
her. “The embassy insisted that we stay in Sofia. Scott doesn’t have a visa to
be in Bulgaria. And what are our chances of finding this bag?”

“Don’t worry about the authorities,”
Sophia argued. “The two of you will be with me. It’ll be okay.”

“What about your responsibilities at the
university?”

“I arranged everything this morning.”

Simon sipped at his tea, which was
unsweetened and strong, as he preferred. How was Sophia able to take off so
much time from her work to be with them? While he appreciated her willingness
to transport him around the country, he couldn’t help but wonder why Sophia had
taken such a personal interest in their activities. Could it be that she was as
eager as Scott to recover the ancient Thracian artifact?

Chapter
51

Rows of proud sunflowers flanked both
sides of the road, their bright, eager faces tilted toward the morning sun.
From a distance, these fertile fields appeared as patches of brilliant yellow
on a green hillside carpet; from up close, it was stunning to see their fiery
blooms, golden florets, hairy stems, and large, rough leaves. Katya couldn’t
remember where she read it, but she had learned that second to corn, sunflowers
grown for the oil they provided were Bulgaria’s most important summer crop. The
sunflower’s hardiness and its tolerance for dryness make it suitable to the
country’s climate, she recalled reading. Planting areas were restricted,
though, due to the sunflower’s susceptibility to disease and pests. The
article, she now remembered clearly, stated that while demand for Bulgarian
sunflower oil output was increasing across Europe, local farmers were not
always following recommended practices of crop rotation, and this was resulting
in decreased output. Advisors from the American Foreign Agricultural Service
were helping farmers improve their crop yields. She applauded herself for
recalling the main arguments of that scientific essay.

Katya shook her head, chasing away numbers
and dry facts to focus on the pure beauty of the flowered scenery as they
headed toward the rising sun. Eastward they went, past the villages of
Bulgarski Izvor, Sopot, and Mikre she noted, catching the names on the
signposts. Farther east they drove, past the turnoff to Lovech and the exit to
Troyan with its famous monastery to the south. The further they drove, the more
their destination was a mystery to her. She turned to question Vlady, but her
companion concentrated on the road—and specifically on the car ahead of them
that they were following surreptitiously.

It was just the two of them on this
journey. This was decided following a vociferous argument the previous night,
when shouted accusations of culpability for their troubles increased in volume
at a direct ratio to the quantity of alcohol consumed. The American, who held
the key to the location of the valuable Thracian relic, had stood before them
at the
kaleto,
and they allowed him to walk away. Not one of them would
take responsibility for letting this happen.

 
“What did you think, that he would voluntarily
return to that cabin in the woods?” Boris shouted, lashing out at his sister
for the first time.

“What was I to do?”

“Perhaps she thought he would just blurt
out where he hid our package the moment he saw her,” Vlady added, swigging back
another shot of strong whiskey. “Oh, hello, Miss Katya, the package is on the
big bus,” he taunted her in broken English.

“I can’t believe it,” Boris said, his
words slurred and spiteful. “You had so many chances to wrench the secret out
of him. What a waste! How could you do this to me?”

“He had amnesia,” Katya protested. “He
didn’t remember a thing. I was trying to help him, to assist him in regaining
his memory,” she said, not revealing the true nature of her actions. “He would
have revealed the secret sooner or later if he hadn’t escaped.”

“Three years!” Boris said, slapping his
hand down hard on the wheelchair’s armrest. “And yet you let him escape. That’s
not good enough, my sister.”

Then Boris directed his fury at his
partner. “What did you expect to happen at the fortress? That wasn’t the
smartest planning, Vlady. We need to do something more. Otherwise, we’ll lose
any chance of recovering the treasure. It’ll fall into Nikolov’s hands for
sure. That treasure’s ours. We have a right to reclaim it!”

“Oh, we’ll get it back,” Vlady stated
with a confidence that was his alone. He wiped his lips with a cloth
handkerchief. “We’ll do something, and Katya here will help us. This time we’ll
do it correctly.”

“What do you mean?” Katya asked,
apprehensive at what his next words would demand of her.

“You know so much about drugs. You
drugged the American for three years. Well, I say we drug the boy again,” Vlady
started. “We drug him, get him to come with us, get him to talk. He’ll confess
what we need to know. Surely you have drugs like that in your arsenal.”

“I don’t know,” Katya replied, her mind
racing through the implications of what Vlady was suggesting. How did he know
that she had forced Scott to take the narcotics? What did he expect her to do
now? She turned to her sister-in-law for support.
“Ralitsa?”

“This shouldn’t have happened,” Ralitsa
said softly. She didn’t expand on what she was thinking.

“We go tomorrow,” Vlady said, rising
from his seat.

“Where do we go?” Boris asked.

“No, just me and Katya.
It will simplify things, make us quicker. Luckily, while the rest of you were
standing in the parking lot, openmouthed and frozen to the spot, I was smart
enough to write down the license plate of the car in which the American was
traveling. As soon as my contact at the police calls me with the address of the
owner, we’ll find Scott. This time we’ll drug him and take him with us. That’s
the plan.”

“Another one of your
stupid schemes!”
Boris sighed.

“This one will work,” Vlady assured him,
rubbing the wheelchair-bound man on the shoulder. “Trust me.”

The problem was that Katya didn’t trust
Vlady. She hadn’t trusted him for a long time, not since that foggy night,
years before, when he had corrupted her beloved husband. It had been before
Hristo’s ski accident; her husband had been alive but vulnerable. She blamed
herself for failing to prevent him from participating in that fateful, illegal
nighttime escapade.

Hristo had known for some time that
Vlady and Boris were up to no good. But once, Katya recalled, Vlady had been
insistent that Hristo’s presence on a “fail-safe job” was absolutely necessary.
Vlady refused to provide more details of where they would be going or what they
would be doing. Katya’s misgivings increased when Vlady showed up unannounced
at her apartment with Boris to pick up her husband.

“Tell me something, Katya,” Vlady said,
half serious as he waited for Hristo to get ready. “Is it not true that a
person will lose consciousness if he inhales chloroform gas?”

“Yes, everyone knows that. You always
see this in the movies.”

“And how quickly would a man be knocked
out after breathing chloroform?”

“Within a very short
while.
Why are you asking these questions?”

“Oh, just to improve my knowledge of the
sciences,” Vlady replied, winking at her.

“
Haide
, Hristo. Let’s go,” Boris
said.

“Just a minute,” Hristo called from the
other room.

The wire cutters sticking out of her
brother’s back pocket made Katya nervous. And when Hristo came into the room
carrying a ski mask, she felt as if she had just been stabbed.

 
“Don’t worry, sister,” Boris said. “We’ll make
sure Hristo doesn’t get into any trouble,” he said, but there was a trace of
uncertainty in his voice.

Chloroform?
A ski mask?
Where were the three of them going? What
were they planning to do? Why had Hristo agreed to accompany them?

Nothing good would come of this, Katya
knew, but she was as incapable of keeping her husband at home now as she was of
preventing him from spending the winter season on the slopes. The three men
walked out into the fog, leaving Katya alone with her reservations.

Katya tossed and
turned,
her mind racing with worries about Vlady’s nocturnal schemes and their
potentially dangerous consequences. The hands on her bedside clock refused to
move. The ticking of its internal mechanism sounded louder than life as the
minutes stretched into hours, and the hours became an eternity of sleepless
fidgeting. Yet somehow she managed to drift off, because when Hristo stretched
out on the bed beside her, she didn’t perceive the nervous twitches of his
troubled limbs.

If Boris didn’t have such a loose
tongue, she may never have learned what the three men had done on that foggy
night. But a short time later, while enjoying a festive dinner of roasted lamb
prepared by Ralitsa to celebrate Palm Sunday, her brother joked with Hristo
about how successful their nighttime escapade had been.

 
“We were in Vratsa, sister,” Boris said with a
mouthful of food. “Don’t worry about your faithful Hristo. He wasn’t hanging
around with loose women; I can vouch for that.”

“What did you do in Vratsa?”

“Maybe you shouldn’t be asking this,”
Ralitsa said quietly.

“No, I want to know. I demand to know.”

“We visited a museum,” Boris said,
laughing.

“Boris!” Hristo said sharply.

“A museum?
Wait a minute. I heard on the radio this week that there was a break-in at the
regional museum in Vratsa.”

“Really?”
Boris
said,
a strange tone in his voice.

“What did you guys do?” Katya asked,
turning from her husband to her brother and back again.

Neither of them would supply her with
answers. Katya stormed away from the table and went to stand at the kitchen
sink.

Ralitsa put down the blue ceramic
serving dish she was rinsing and turned to her sister-in-law. “Don’t fret about
this, Katya.”

“Vlady made them do it,” Katya said, not
bothering to keep her voice low. The fact that she had been unable to prevent
her husband from joining the criminal scheme was burning her from the inside.

“I know,” Ralitsa whispered back.
“And to think that he’s forcing Boris to keep it here.”

“What are you talking about?” Ralitsa
seemed to know a lot more than she did.

“It’s in the basement now—the item they
stole from the museum. Vlady insisted that Boris safeguard it. Katya, I’m
worried. It’s stolen property. What if the police came and found it? Boris
would be arrested, and I would be an accessory to the crime!”

“What are you women gossiping about?”
Boris asked, opening the refrigerator to retrieve two more beers. “Ralitsa,
there’s nothing to worry about. As for you, my dear sister, stop sticking your
nose where it doesn’t belong.”

It was only later that night, when Katya
was alone with her
husband, that
Hristo confessed to
what he had done with Vlady and Boris.

“I thought they were joking,” he said,
sitting in his armchair and refusing to look his wife in the eyes. “Vlady said
there was a huge demand for silver artifacts. We could get a fortune selling
the museum pieces, he said. All our financial problems would be solved, and no
one would ever know. Vlady had connections with the night security guard. He
assured us that the guard could easily be bribed to look the other way, and,
well, we had a bottle of chloroform to make sure he wouldn’t interfere.

“Everything went according to plan,
well, according to Vlady’s plan that is,” Hristo continued. “Boris cut the
wires of the alarm system, we broke the lock on the back entrance, and Vlady
used a rag soaked with that gas to knock out the guard. The valuable items in
the museum were like candy for the taking. We could have taken so much, but
Vlady steered us to the back room, where the Thracian treasures were on
display. Those were our real targets, he explained. We would get good money for
them, he assured us.”

“So, how much did you take?” Katya
asked,
her voice almost too soft to be heard above her
beating heart.

“That’s what was strange. I thought we
would take everything in sight, as much as we could carry. After all, there was
so much silver there, so much gold. But Vlady led us to one specific piece. He
was keen and single-minded. It was clear to me that this was not a random
robbery. He knew what he was looking for. He knew which piece he wanted.”

“And which one was that?”

“The featured item on display was
something called the Rogozen Drinking Lion. It was an intricately sculpted
piece of silver. It’s famous. I think I actually heard about it when that
famous professor discovered it a number of years ago. What was his name?”

“Smirnenski.”

“Yes, that’s the one.”

“You stole the Rogozen Drinking Lion!”
She was stunned at this news.

“Vlady stole it. Well, him and Boris. I
was just there with them, Katya, providing them with cover. I didn’t actually
touch anything or take anything,” Hristo said, proclaiming his innocence.

“Ralitsa said that it’s in her
basement,” Katya said, remembering their interrupted conversation. “What are
you going to do with it?”

 
“What am I going to do with it? Nothing! I’m
through with those guys. I’m sorry I ever went with them. I shouldn’t have done
it, but now it’s in the past.”

“But that museum piece!
It’s just sitting in Ralitsa and Boris’s house?”

“It’s a hot item, too hot to market.
When we took it, when Vlady took it, I assumed he already had a buyer lined up.
But I guess that deal fell through. Now he needs to keep it out of sight. He
said he might bury it, literally, until he can market it safely.”