Father Jon’s stunning revelation eclipsed even the horrifying roar of Kyropos. His words and actions just didn’t register. Worse still, the pilot of the helicopter was not there to pluck us from the jaws of certain death. It was too impossible to imagine. Then, I remembered the father’s steely eyes, the hardened face that I suddenly did not know. I remembered my first impression of him, the pleasure he seemed to take in disguising his role as a monk. Now it was all so clear. How could I have allowed myself to trust the son of a bitch?
I glanced at Niki, and she at me. Her face was drawn, bruised and swollen, smudged with the fine grime of ash that thickened the air. Mine must have looked the same. She turned back toward the father, pale, swooning like a victim of fever. If I hadn’t been holding her, we both might have collapsed.
“Father Jon,” Niki said, her voice full of pleading, “what are you doing? What are you saying? I … I do not understand.”
“Of course you do not understand,” Father Jon said with a heartless sneer. “Everyone, including your father, believed that Gustavo Giacopetti was the great Rafael. Who would ever suspect a humble little monk from Santorini?” His laugh was suddenly menacing, his expression hard. He fondled the pistol as easily as a set of rosary beads. “I am Rafael,” he said, thumping his chest with the pistol. “Raphael, the brilliant mastermind of the world’s most successful smuggling ring— that is how the newspapers describe me. Giacopetti was a bumbling idiot, a brainless thug that thought he was smart enough to get the scroll and leave me here to die. But look!” He shook the backpack. “See who has the scroll! See who is alive and who is dead! Satan rest his rotten soul.”
At that moment, I realized we were staring at the tortured face of a madman.
Then, Father Jon reached into the pocket of his shorts and produced a wafer-thin cell phone. He unfolded it and held it up. “The wonders of modern electronics.”
“Your little walk on the beach?” I said, remembering that I’d thought he’d needed the time alone to grieve. “You were calling your buddy.”
“And you were sniveling about the great injustices of life. Very depressing. As you can see, there are no injustices … at least not for me.”
“And your little speech on truth?” I shouted back. “All one big lie, right?”
Kyropos bellowed, and every head turned.
Father Jon, pistol ready, nodded to his pilot, who had already scrambled into the chopper and was beginning to throttle the engine.
Father Jon pulled open the passenger door to board. “A big lie?” he shouted. “By no means. You see, I have already secured a buyer for the scroll. You will be disappointed to know, of course, that he does not happen to live on Pialigos. He is, in fact, Russian. But he promises that he will give the scroll a very secure home. Two hundred million dollars—that will buy one hell of a lot of truth.”
Suddenly the ground quavered violently, nearly knocking us from our feet. Father Jon stepped into the helicopter.
“What are you going to do about us?” Niki shouted after them.
“I do not think I will have to do anything—this time,” Father Jon shouted back. “Kyropos seems eager enough to finish this unpleasant task.”
Niki looked puzzled. “What do you mean, ‘this time’?”
“You still do not understand?” Father Jon said. “Your father. His documentation. He would have upset my network. I could not allow him to do that.”
“You?” Niki pulled herself from me. “You killed my father?”
“I assure you,” Father Jon said through a soulless grin, “he felt no pain.”
“Bastard!” The word exploded from Niki’s mouth. She started for the chopper, but the spinning blades kicked up too much sand. She threw up an arm and was forced to turn away. As the chopper lifted, the blast of sand subsided. Niki screamed curses at the fleeing men.
“I will kill you!” Niki shrieked. “I will hunt you down, and I will kill you.” She kicked the sand and stood working her fingers, grasping nothing.
Father Jon waved through the bubble of glass, and Niki, exasperated, dropped to her knees and buried her face in her hands, sobbing.
An instant later, a tremendous explosion split the air, shaking the entire beach. Kyropos coughed like some alien monster dying. A gigantic amoeba of sprawling lava surged through the sky, engulfed the chopper like a toy, and then plunged with hissing violence into the black water.
Niki stood and I stepped next to her, both of us shocked to see two men vaporized before our eyes. Added to this was Father Jon’s stunning revelation. The filth of deception that I felt would not compare to what must have been going through Niki at that moment. She’d befriended the murderer of her father, shared secrets, and invested a trust reserved for the rarest and closest of friends—a priest, for God’s sake. Now I understood why he expressed more concern for the scroll than for Niki. He’d never cared about her; he’d only used her to get his hands on the scroll. He’d succeeded, but his success was fleeting. Justice had been done, horrible justice, for the world would never know the treasure it had just lost.
Now there was nothing to do but wait. Our only good fortune was that the wind carried the ash and the poison gases away from us. If the wind shifted, it would be a slow, choking death.
I couldn’t bear the thought of watching Niki die. I took her in my arms, and she nuzzled her face in my chest; in that moment I knew that ours was not the embrace of two souls merely clinging in fear against the onslaught of terrifying forces. It was the rising of a deeper connection. Niki lifted her face, and our lips met. For me, there was a profoundly satisfying sense of fulfillment in that kiss, as if every struggle I’d ever had with love was utterly and completely resolved. I knew she felt it too, and I wanted to see it in her face. I pulled back and touched the tears that streamed down her cheeks. Like a thousand Aegean sunsets, the beauty of her soul burned indelibly into my mind. Somehow it no longer mattered that we stood at the end of our earthly lives; it only mattered that we had arrived at this moment together.
Her eyes searched and locked on something in mine; her lips quivered as she struggled for words.
“Don’t say anything,” I said, pulling her back to my chest. Words could only diminish what I felt. I closed my eyes wanting only to die with that picture of her face in my mind.
Niki pulled away from me again. “There is something that I must tell you.”
I waited, but she was suddenly distracted, attentive to some sound mixed in the roar of the volcano. She pushed away from me and took a few steps toward the water. “Do you hear it?”
“Hear what?” I moved beside her.
“Look!” She pointed. “Another helicopter!”
I heard the beating of the blades first. Then I spotted the blinking lights of the chopper. It couldn’t be true. A spotlight flooded the beach. We shielded our eyes and stood in absolute awe watching the heavenly craft descend like a lumbering angel through a stinging cloud of sand. By some inexplicable miracle, this angel bore the wings of the United States Air Force.
The medic attending the gash in my head explained that Threader had sent out the Mayday. Niki and I pieced together the rest of the story. Giacopetti had put a bullet in Threader, torched the Penelope, and swooped in to relieve us of the scroll. Threader revived and called in the Mayday. Somehow, he swam to Kyropos, retrieved the Zodiac, and then paddled back to the Penelope undetected by Giacopetti’s driver. He managed to tie the mine to the front of the Zodiac, position himself for the ambush, and pray that Niki had seen his signal.
Safe in the chopper with Niki asleep against my chest, I wondered what she had been about to tell me just before the rescue. Part of me wanted to wake her and find out. Another part was afraid of what she might say. Was she involved with someone? If so, why would she lead me on?
The scroll was lost. My reason for staying on Sarnafi had disintegrated into a disappointing end. What next? Would Niki want me to stay? Had Marion left me? What would I do if she hadn’t?
A wave of exhaustion pushed my eyes closed, and in a swirl of unresolved questions, I tumbled into deep sleep.
The sun was coming up when the pilot dropped us off by a roadside just outside of Perivolos. Flat with fatigue, Niki and I trudged to the dock and caught a ride to Sarnafi with a fisherman setting out for his day’s work. The fisherman explained that Sarnafi had sustained only minor damage from the tsunami. Pialigos had dodged it altogether. Just then my only care was that there was at least one undamaged bed that I could fall into.
When we approached Sarnafi, we could see Barnes’s boat moored offshore. Nicholas was sorting through what was left of the dock. The gazebo had vanished.
“I was on Santorini when the wave hit,” Nicholas explained, “so the boat was spared. The dock and the gazebo, they were not so lucky. But no matter—such things can be rebuilt.” He took a deep breath and placed a hand on Niki’s shoulder. In a somber tone, he explained, “Mr. Barnes, he is not so good. His heart, I think it gives him problems.”
Nicholas wasn’t the kind to issue false alarms. Niki didn’t wait for him to retrieve the golf cart and drive us to the villa. She threw off her exhaustion and shot up the stairs in a near run. My body was made of lead, and it was all I could do to keep up, but I stayed with her. There was no way I was going to let her face this crisis alone.
At the patio, a worried Dora scurried from the house. “Niki, thank God you are here,” she cried out, wringing her hands. “Mr. Barnes, he has been asking for you. For days now, he asks only for you.”
We scrambled through the house straight for Barnes’s bedroom. Through the half-opened door, I could see him lying in his bed, perfectly still, eyes closed, his skin white as death.
Were we too late?
I watched Niki take slow, tentative steps across the room, lowering herself gently, tenderly, to a seat on the edge of the bed.
I leaned against the casing of the door, needing a moment to indulge in some good old-fashioned self-pity. After all we’d been through—cheated out of the scroll, losing everything but our lives and the clothes on our backs—and this is what we got? Barnes’s corpse?
Damn you, Barnes. How could you dump this on us now?
Niki was as tired as I was, drawing on hidden reserves of strength. She had to be hovering somewhere near her emotional bottom. Her father had been murdered, one friend had been killed on Kyropos, and another friend had betrayed her. Now Barnes was either dead or close to it. Incredibly, she was ready to meet the situation head-on. I’d never witnessed this much strength in anyone—man or woman.
In contrast, my mind was so fogged, so flaccid with defeat, that I was sure I couldn’t fill half a thimble with what I had left to give. I pushed myself away from the door and stood directly behind Niki. I could see her face in the large mirror of a vanity on the other side of the bed. Pale and drawn, her eyes circled with fatigue, she searched anxiously for any flicker of life that might stir in the still remains of her old friend.
Barnes surprised us both when his eyelids suddenly twitched and fluttered open. For the next few seconds, I watched his glassy eyes wander like two lost spirits across the ceiling. He rolled his head slightly, and his eyes settled on Niki. A frail smile of recognition brought some life to his pallid face.
“Niki, darling. You’re safe.”
“Yes,” Niki said, in a gasp of relief. “I am safe.”
Barnes closed his eyes, and I could see his lips move slightly. He might have been muttering a prayer of thanksgiving. When he reopened his eyes, they’d gathered a little more life—not that intense, green-eyed, soul-unhinging glare, but enough to know that R. Wesley Barnes was still in there someplace.
“We … we were getting a little worried about you,” he said, though I could barely hear him.
“Do not worry for me,” Niki said, pushing wild strands of white hair off his sweat-beaded forehead. “I am fine. We are both fine.”
She turned and shot me a glance, her eyes bright with a lot more hope than I believed Barnes’s condition warranted. As much as I admired her faith, I knew he was teetering on the edge. It wouldn’t be long before he tipped. He looked like death, like he was living on borrowed minutes. I had to push aside that bout of realism to give Niki a nod and a smile of assurance that said I thought everything was good.
“How did … how did it go?” The question slipped like a dry leaf through Barnes’s cracked lips.
“We have it, Rufus,” Niki lied. Then, in what looked like an effort to strengthen the deception, she clasped his hand with both of hers. “We have the scroll. There is no need to worry. I will … I will tell you all about it—later.”
Something told me she wasn’t as optimistic as I’d thought, as if she wasn’t so sure there would be a later.
“I knew it,” Barnes said. “I knew you’d do it. The Pialigarians … they’re going to be okay. You’ll … you’ll get the scroll to New York?”
“Yes,” Niki assured him. “I know what to do. Everything is taken care of. You can rest now.”
“You make sure that … that the first … translation … gets to Adams.”
“Yes,” Niki said. “He is right here. Everything will be just like you said. It is all taken care of. Everything is fine.”
Barnes turned his feeble gaze on me and smiled as if I’d just entered the room. Even with the life draining from his eyes, he still managed some humor.
“No soap-on-a-rope after all, huh, Adams?” The effort of a chuckle cost him a lung-rattling coughing spell.
I waited for the coughing to subside. I was reluctant to spar with him, but he settled and looked as if he was waiting for something more from me than a smile.
“I guess a few convicts are going to be a little disappointed,” I said, hoping he wouldn’t laugh.
He didn’t. He kept his reaction to a smile and wheezed out a couple more breaths. “You done good, Adams. I thank you for it. Bet you got you one hell of a story.”
Recent events flashed through my mind: Niki’s brush with death, Threader’s murder, Father Jon’s deception and horrific demise. Giacopetti and his henchmen, all dead. The disintegration of the scroll. I just nodded and tightened one side of my face into something that looked like a smile.
“One hell of a story,” was all I said, and the comment seemed to satisfy Barnes. Our business arrangement was complete. He had his scroll; I had my story.
He turned his attention back to Niki. “Niki, darling, there’s something I should have told you years ago.”
“No,” Niki protested. “You need to rest. You can tell me when you wake up.”
Barnes gathered the strength to make a slow, side-to-side motion with his head. “This can’t wait. I may not …” Another wheezy breath. “Niki, this isn’t gonna be easy. I need you to stop fussing over me and listen real good.”
Stiff with concern, she nodded her agreement, but it was a reluctant nod. “Okay. I listen.” She leaned in close, as attentive as if she’d just risen from a good night’s sleep.
The urgency in Barnes’s tone made me afraid for her.
Barnes closed his eyes like a man searching for the courage to divulge his dark deathbed secret. There were a couple more labored breaths, a few more moments of hesitation. Then, he said it.
“Niki. Alexios wasn’t your father.”
Did I hear him right? Was it his medication talking?
I looked at Niki in the mirror, and she was still looking at Barnes, her expression unchanged, as if she was asking herself the same question. She sat still for a few moments longer, and then she turned to me, frowning, her face dark with a mix of fatigue and the confused question, Did he say what I thought he said?
I responded with a light shrug, just enough to show her that she was going to have to get some clarification. She turned back to Barnes, let out a bewildered laugh, grew more serious, and leaned in closer.
“Rufus, I … I do not understand what you are trying to say. Of course Alexios was my father. I think perhaps … perhaps you should try to get some res—”
“Please, darling, you’re not listening to me. What I’m trying to say … no … I’m telling you that Alexios wasn’t your daddy. He raised you. Done a damn good job of it too, but he wasn’t your daddy. He was your uncle.”
I shifted my eyes between Barnes’s determined face and Niki, sitting still, scarcely breathing, dumbstruck with fatigue and the truly bizarre concept that had just pelted her frazzled brain.
Barnes had to be delirious, cracking maybe. Or it was all just a real bad dream. If we could just get some sleep we would wake up to a more suitable reality.
God, we needed sleep.
I noticed Barnes drifting again, maybe this time for good. He caught himself and came back, his eyes a little sharper. He started going again, but he regained enough clarity to drop an even bigger bomb.
“Niki … I’m … I’m your father.”
His words dangled like a shard of broken glass in a weather-beaten window frame. Now I was afraid to breathe, afraid the slightest movement could dislodge it, send that shard plunging straight down through Niki’s heart.
I could see Niki’s mouth open in a slow, trembling gape. Nothing came out when she tried to speak. She cleared her throat and spoke as if every remnant of strength had finally gone from her being.
“What … what are you saying? That … that cannot be … possible.”
Tears dropped from the corners of Barnes’s eyes. Another bomb. “Your mama was Celia’s sister. Her name was Anna. That’s … that’s where you got your name. Anna Nicole. The name of a beautiful, beautiful woman, just like you. Thank God you got her looks instead of mine.” His attempt at a smile was broken in quivering anguish. “Alexios, he introduced me to your mama. Hell, I didn’t even know she was pregnant with you ’til I heard she’d died in childbirth. Alexios … he told me that Celia couldn’t have children and that they’d take you if it was all right with me. At the time, I was hopping all over the world … couldn’t have given you any kind of a home. So … I agreed. I … I sent money. Paid for your school … everything. Always figured one day I’d tell you. But hell, they did such a good job of raising you, I didn’t … I didn’t have the heart, didn’t want to hurt them … or you. That’s why Celia doesn’t like me. She thinks I abandoned your mama. I swear I didn’t know.” His eyes narrowed and fixed firmly on Niki’s. “I … I just hope … I just hope you don’t hold it against me.”
I couldn’t begin to fathom what must have been going through Niki’s mind just then. Even if she was rested and sharp, this was nerve-shattering, mind-blowing stuff.
I watched as Niki—her face tear streaked, broken in anguish—clutched Barnes’s hand as if she didn’t know whether to hug him or press a pillow over his face.
“I … I do not know what to say,” she said in a heartrending whimper. “This is … this is so much … so much …”
“You don’t have to say anything, darling.” Barnes squeezed out another cough. “I … I just wanted you to know, that’s all. You had to know. Everything I got … it’s yours … all yours. The houses … every last penny … it’s all taken care of.” He started to drift, but he forced his eyes to stay focused on hers. “I … I love you, darling. With all my heart … I … love … you. I … I just wanted you to know.”
Wes Barnes tried to force one last smile. Instead, his head rolled slightly, and his eyes widened and stopped on something beyond the wall across the room, something beautiful that I knew I could not see even if I turned to look. His face radiated with the same otherworldly light that I had witnessed at my father’s passing. Barnes closed his eyes and let out a long, shuddering breath that I knew would be his last.
Niki collapsed, clutching in pure anguish at Barnes’s lifeless body.
I stood numb and motionless and swallowed at the growing ache in my throat. The cracked echo of Barnes’s last words lingered in my mind and mingled with Niki’s sobs. There was nothing for me to say—nothing for anybody to say. Rufus Wesley Barnes was dead, and that was it.
I ran a hand over Niki’s back and wondered if she could feel, through the muddle of pain, shock, and brain-numbing fatigue, even a small portion of the comfort that I so desperately wanted to impart through my touch. It was the least I could do for the archaeologist who was beginning to unearth some forgotten piece of my heart.
J Douglas Bottorff 