Two men were already standing—one behind a desk, the other beside it—when I entered the room. Both had apparently been too infatuated with Niki to notice my brief delay.
De Santis introduced the man behind the desk—sixties, full face, tired, friendly brown eyes, brown tie loosened at the neck—as Chief of Police Antonio Lo Bianco. The other was Gustavo Giacopetti, a tall, stern man also in his sixties. He had dark, predatory eyes, a thin mustache, and black hair oiled in place. Giacopetti, wearing a charcoal, well-tailored, double-breasted suit, reminded me of a slightly scaled-down Greek version of Saddam Hussein. The guy stood with one arm folded across his stomach, the elbow of the other resting in the palm. In his other hand he held a cigarette, poised near his lips, pinched European-style between his thumb and forefinger.
“Dr. Mikos,” Giacopetti said, stepping close to Niki, his head teetering with arrogance, “what an unexpected pleasure.” Giacopetti delivered an extended kiss to her knuckles, his eyes slowly dropping the length of her body.
I had an instant disliking for the man. Under different circumstances, I would have been happy to offer Mr. Giacopetti another set of knuckles to kiss.
“Alexios Mikos, he is your father. Am I correct?” Giacopetti asked.
“He was my father.” Niki pulled her hand away.
“Yes, I remember that dreadful plane crash,” Giacopetti said, slightly ruffled by the snub. “Please, allow me to extend my deepest sympathies, belated as they are. A most unfortunate accident.”
“Accident? So we were told.” Niki’s eyes had fixed angrily on Giacopetti’s. “Strange that his office was ransacked, his vault emptied the very same day of this accident.”
“Really?” A nervous smile quivered at one corner of Giacopetti’s mouth. “I had not heard that.” He took a step back and said nothing more.
Like hell, I thought, watching Giacopetti’s eyes shift like a pair of cockroaches looking for a place to hide. The man was a bad liar.
The tension caused De Santis to step in. “My friends have experienced a small problem,” he explained to Lo Bianco. “It seems that one of our pickpockets has favored a backpack that belongs to Mr. Adams.”
“Yes, the cardinal did call,” Lo Bianco said, his head bobbing slightly when he turned to me. “This knapsack of yours, Mr. Adams, I assume it contained valuables?”
I recalled the contents. “Camera, notebook, a photograph, a few other odds and ends inside.”
“Mr. Adams is a writer,” Niki said quickly, “a novelist from America. The notebook is quite important to him.”
“A novelist, is it?” Lo Bianco said, turning back to me. “Often I have myself thought of writing. Crime novels, you know.” I smiled with interest, trying to look as if I’d never heard that pat response of someone who’d just learned what I did for a living. Fortunately, the chief was too busy to outline his guaranteed blockbuster. Instead, he laughed tiredly and regarded the stacks of paper that cluttered his desk. “As long as I am in this job, I am afraid that police reports will make up the extent of my writing career. There is always the need for another report.” He dismissed the problem with a fatalistic wave of the hand. “So, tell me of this photograph. Was it of a person? Man? Woman?” He smiled at Niki with the warmth of a beaming father. “Your lovely companion, perhaps?”
De Santis intervened. “It is the photo of a parchment that Mr. Adams hoped to authenticate for his research. We at the Vatican were sorry to inform him that his photo was a mere forgery.” He turned to me, his eyes showing no hint of the fabrication. “I hope you were not too disappointed,” he added.
I shrugged coolly. “Guess I’m not the only one in the world who does fiction.”
Lo Bianco bobbed his head, apparently satisfied with the explanation. “So tell me, Mr. Adams, what did this backpack look like? Color? Style?” I described it, and Lo Bianco barked a few orders in Italian into the telephone. “There. If it can be found, we shall find it. And where may we reach you?”
“The Hilton,” Niki said.
“And you will be leaving when?”
“As soon as we get back to the hotel.”
Lo Bianco chuckled. “I hope you are not expecting miracles.”
“We intend to tour the Greek islands,” Niki explained. “Stuart is considering the setting for his new book.” She scribbled Wes Barnes’s name and telephone number on a notepad and handed it to Lo Bianco. “You may reach us here.”
Giacopetti’s eyes shifted with interest behind slithering tendrils of smoke. He took a final drag from the cigarette, snuffed it in an ashtray, and stepped directly in front of me. “This parchment forgery of yours, where did it come from?”
“I don’t know,” I said, smelling the stink of tobacco on his breath.
“The parchment itself, you have seen it?”
“I’ve only seen the picture.”
“Your tour, Mr. Adams, it would not, by chance, be for the purpose of locating this … forgery, would it?”
My heart cranked up a couple of beats.
“Mr. Giacopetti,” De Santis protested. “I have already explained Mr. Adams’s purpose for inquiring about the parchment. Dr. Mikos has told us that he is considering the islands for the setting of his next book. Mr. Adams is, himself, a victim of a crime. I see no need for further questioning of this nature.”
“Perhaps you are right, Inspector. But there is a matter that concerns me.” Giacopetti took a step toward Niki, tilted his head back, and glared at her down his nose. “Athens has put a stop to your father’s work at Sarnafi, am I correct?”
“Of course you know they did,” Niki said stiffly. “It was you who propagated the lies that caused it.”
“Lies?” He glanced at De Santis and Lo Bianco. “Perhaps not everyone in our present company is aware that there were items missing from this site. Is this not what the report stated?”
I could see the muscles in Niki’s jaw tighten. “What the report fails to say is that the items in question seemed to disappear somewhere between the Sarnafi site and your office. Perhaps, Mr. Giacopetti, there are holes in the floor of your office?”
“Holes, indeed,” Giacopetti said with an amused chuckle. “This photograph, it makes me wonder what your father hoped to find on Sarnafi. Pialigarian pottery? An understanding of the Pialigarian social life, perhaps? Or was it, Dr. Mikos, a parchment scroll? Athens, I am certain, would be quite interested to do some intense probing into this matter.”
“Athens knows what we do at Sarnafi,” Niki snapped. “We hide nothing. They know it, and you know it as well.”
I was hoping she’d keep the thing about wine storage to herself. Something told me a shrewd guy like Giacopetti would never buy it. Fortunately, Lo Bianco stood and lightly clapped his hands to signal the meeting had concluded.
“Well, my friends, I believe we have all the information we need. I assure you, Mr. Adams, we will do everything we can to recover your lost property.” He turned to De Santis. “Please thank Cardinal Sorrentino for bringing this incident to my attention. I am always happy to assist with matters of concern to the Church.”
De Santis made a slight bow. He escorted Niki through the door with me a few steps behind.
“Mr. Adams?” Giacopetti called out.
I stopped, but I only half turned.
“I hope the presumptions under which you intend to visit my country are not as fictitious as I assume your novel will be. We Greeks are an accommodating people. Our prisons are crowded, but we always seem to have room for one more guest.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said, and I walked out the door.
De Santis led us to the car. Explaining that he had further business at the police station, he remained.
We were pulling away when I glanced up to see Giacopetti watching our departure from Lo Bianco’s office window. I had a bad feeling that we hadn’t seen the last of him.
I slumped back in the seat and stared out the window, nothing of the passing scenery registering in my mind. I was too busy toying with the idea of heading back to Denver.
The trip from Rome to Santorini included a two-hour layover in Athens, adequate time to buy a camera, a notebook, and a cheap backpack. Engaging in that brief shopping spree provided enough of a distraction to gloss over most of my worries about Giacopetti.
The Olympic Airways flight from Athens to Santorini—a three-row commuter—bounced over the air like a pickup truck on a rutted road. Wes Barnes, intent on passing the forty-minute flight reading his newspaper, had taken the seat in the single row. Niki, now braless beneath a red tank top and cutoff jeans, sat in the window seat next to me, doing her part in keeping my mind off Giacopetti.
The plane passed over the islands of Kea, Kythnos, Serifos, Sifnos, Kimolos, Milos, and Folegandros. Niki pointed through the sun-washed glimmer of the water to a cluster of islands.
“There. Santorini.”
Red and black cliffs of the horseshoe island jutted a thousand feet out of the Aegean. I could see whitewashed buildings huddled precariously close to the cliff edges. Cruise ships, like huge grains of bleached rice, lay anchored in the cobalt harbor. The bay separating Santorini from the smaller island of Thirassia and the uninhabited and smaller still, Aspronisi, was actually the western edge of the volcano’s crater. At the center of the crater were two more islands.
“That is Nea Kameni,” Niki said of one of the islands. “It only emerged from the sea just over three hundred years ago. It also remains uninhabited. Palia Kameni is much older. If you like a hot mud bath, you go there. Perhaps I can show you—once you recover from your jet lag, of course.”
I was thinking about Marion when I said, “I’ve made it forty-seven years without the benefit of a mud bath. I figure I can make it at least that many more.” Still, I couldn’t help wonder what Niki would look like covered in nothing but a thin layer of mud. Rather than dwell on that one, I took out my pad and pencil. “Tell me about Thera’s eruption.”
“We know the people of ancient Thera and most of the other islands had left their homes. Unlike Pompeii, scientists have yet to discover even a single corpse in the excavations at Akrotiri, proof that most of the population escaped. They were warned, we suspect, by a previous eruption. In the post-cataclysm era, the speculation is that many fleeing Minoans integrated with other cultures in much the same way that your North American Anasazi, forced by drought to abandon their elaborate dwellings, might have integrated with the Hopi and other Pueblo tribes. The Minoans did not attempt to resettle Thera. The next inhabitants were Phoenicians, many centuries later.
“The modern Pialigarians maintain that Pialigos has always been the spiritual heart of the Minoan empire. Perhaps they began as a mystical sect of the Minoans, equivalent, say, to the relationship between the Cabalists and the traditional Jew. Anthropologists tend to treat the Pialigarians as a people different from the ancient Minoans. But I believe the Pialigarian roots, which extend back to the time before recorded history, are essentially Minoan.
“The current high priestess of Pialigos, Euphemia, insists that the Minoans once possessed a mystical knowledge that had been the key to their phenomenal success, and that the Pialigarians were the keepers of this knowledge. With the eruption of Thera, the people of the empire dispersed, records were lost or destroyed, and the Minoan form of writing gradually changed from Linear A to Linear B. The most significant casualty of the ancient disaster, however, was the loss of this body of mystical knowledge.
“Sixteen hundred years after the eruption, a young Pialigarian scribe became disenchanted with his post-cataclysmic religion, charging that it had no heart, no wisdom, but consisted only of empty doctrine and meaningless ritual.”
“The great lie?” I asked, remembering the broken passage in Barnes’s translation.
“We believe so. The scribe’s protests earned him the contempt of the priests, and they banished him from the island. According to Pialigarian lore, the scribe wandered around the world in search of the lost wisdom. When he found it, he recorded it on a parchment scroll, in the sacred script of his ancestors—perhaps to give it a more authentic appearance. Returning to Pialigos, he was determined to impart this lost knowledge to his people. The people, astonished by the new revelation, began calling the young scribe the Prophet. The priesthood, fearing this charismatic young upstart as a threat to their authority, seized the scroll and condemned the Prophet to death. Before he died, he vowed that he would return and impart the secret knowledge that would restore their empire and bring peace to the entire world.”
“Reincarnation?”
“Yes. An accepted tenet of Pialigarian religion.”
I stopped writing. “And all the Pialigarians are supposed to recognize this Prophet guy when he shows up? What’s he going to do, descend out of the clouds?”
“No. Recognizing him is the sacred duty of the high priestess. She is chosen on the basis of a dream, one that foretells the Prophet’s coming. The dream must come when the priestess is but a child, innocent, unable to deceive. All the mothers watch and listen to what their daughters tell them about their dreams. If there is something significant, the mother passes it on to the high priestess. Once the high priestess confirms the authenticity of the dream, the girl is ordained as the Dream Child. She is then groomed to succeed the high priestess at her death.
“Euphemia’s childhood dream, it was different. She was told that the Prophet would come within her lifetime. And when he comes, he will undergo a test that Euphemia will administer. When he passes the test, the secret knowledge will be restored, and the position of high priestess will come to an end. Every person will awaken, and the new era of a world ‘sweet with the fragrance of peace,’ as Pialigarian prophecy predicts, will begin.” She paused and studied me for a moment before adding, “There is, of course, a more … romantic side to this story, but I cannot tell you about it now.”
“Why not?”
“Because.”
“Because isn’t an answer.” I’d sometimes use that bit of logic on Marion when she was in one of her evade-through-ambiguity modes. It never worked with her, and I quickly saw that it wasn’t going to work with Niki.
“Another time, perhaps,” was all she said before she turned back to the window. The plane banked slowly to the right, and Niki pointed to a large mass of land. “The big island is Anafi. If you look very carefully, you can see two tiny islands. The one furthest to the east is Sarnafi. You can just see Carpathos and Casos. Pialigos lies on the Mediterranean side of Casos, two hundred and fifty kilometers from here, a hundred or more kilometers from Sarnafi.” She hesitated and then said, “Stuart, I want to take you to Pialigos. I want you to meet Euphemia. We would make the trip by sailboat. We could take the scenic passage, leave from Santorini, go north of Anafi and then south, around Casos. It is a wonderful way to experience the Aegean. It will give you a good sense of the setting for your book.”
The intensity in her eyes told me she wasn’t going to take no for an answer. Of course, I had no intention of denying myself that opportunity. But I pressed the pencil’s eraser to my chin, and feigning a sober, businesslike frown, I said, “I suppose if you twist my arm real hard, you could talk me into it.”
Her intensity lightened. She raised a straight-thumbed, girlish fist and shook it menacingly close to my face. “There are better ways of convincing you than a mere twisting of the arm.”
“Hey, there’s no need to get ugly.”
“Then, you will go? Willingly?”
I nodded, and when she dropped her weapon, I added, “The only thing scarier than that fist of yours is the thought of a volcano exploding with us out there in the middle of the ocean. Wouldn’t it be safer to take something with wings?”
“Kyropos? Ha! Kyropos is nothing. I grew up on Santorini, source of one of the most devastating eruptions in human history. I do not frighten so easily.”
The plane began its descent in earnest. Niki sat back in her seat and looked straight ahead, a light smile shimmering over her face. “Of course, if you are frightened …”
I wasn’t sure how or when it happened, but somewhere on the drive between the Monolithos airport and the docks at Perivolos, I’d fallen hopelessly in love—with Santorini.
Intimate villages, with the clean, whitewashed houses of old fishermen. Lazy burros urged on by small boys with sticks, packing their burdens in large baskets, tripping over rocky paths lined with smatterings of daisies, red poppies, and naked boulders. Tangled, low-cut vineyards scattered in a patchwork of red and black soils. Humid breezes perfumed with thyme, sage, mint, summer savory, lavender, and rosemary. Beaches of white, black, and red sand lapped by sapphire seas, trimmed with shallow ribbons of turquoise.
Something as real and as vivid as a childhood memory called to me from that island. Had I been one of the ancient Minoans forced to flee that thirty-mile plume of killing ash? Had I watched, in a swirl of indefinable emotion, everything I’d known as my earthly home vanish in a roiling fury of flame and froth? I wouldn’t have thought so, not in a thousand years. Now, careening over a narrow road through countryside that sparked an inexplicable feeling of having come home, I had to wonder.
At the dock of Perivolos was Nicholas Pappadopoulos, Barnes’s Sarnafi groundskeeper. Nicholas—tall, graying, slightly stooped though agile for his age, sun-leathered face, the gentle eyes of a philosopher—helped me transfer the luggage from the cab to his awaiting boat.
A few hours later, we were approaching Sarnafi’s western shore. Still some distance out, I could see the home that Barnes had called his “little beach house”—villa, more like it. A zigzagging set of stairs broken by periodic landings provided access to the estate from the sea. Perched high in the cliffs among a swirl of gulls, I could imagine a commanding view of the sea in every direction.
On the beach was a gazebo with a thatched roof and a wooden pier extending about twenty-five yards into the water. A trailer-rigged golf cart awaited us at the dock. Niki, Nicholas, and Wes Barnes stepped off the boat while I stayed on to pass off the luggage to Nicholas. When I hoisted Niki’s suitcase, I made a slight grunting sound and joked to Nicholas under my breath that he may need a separate truck for this one.
The philosopher smiled knowingly and, in an equally low tone, said, “Now you understand the reason for the trailer. Before …” He shook his head like a victim of former atrocities.
When the loading was complete, Barnes and Nicholas boarded the cart. Niki and I opted for the stairs.
On our way up, Niki explained that the estate had started as crude barracks built to accommodate the workers excavating the island’s Pialigarian temple. Over the years, it evolved to its present, sprawling, if not haphazard, complex.
Somewhere along the way, she made a curt remark about her mother, Celia, and how they didn’t speak much anymore.
“Your mother lives on Santorini?” I asked.
“Chios. Some believe the island is the birthplace of Christopher Columbus. My mother inherited the home where she was born and raised. I think she draws some peace from the surroundings of her childhood, her way of escaping her grief for my father’s death. For her, the scroll carries a curse. She is Catholic, you know, prone to superstition. She worries that I will share my father’s fate.”
“Maybe she’s got reason to worry,” I said, thinking about Giacopetti and his thugs.
“I do not worry. Why should she? She has always been a worrier. She worried when I was at Knossos. Now she worries for me at Sarnafi. All of my life she worries for me. Worry for this thing, worry for that thing. It does not matter. Worry is what she does the best. Rufus has even offered her an apartment at the villa, just so she can be here to see that all goes well. But she will have nothing to do with him. She has never liked him. I am convinced that she believes he is responsible for taking my father from her—in life, and now in death. My father, you see, he spent a great deal of time away. Always he was searching for the scroll. I think she has resented Rufus for this. And now that my father is gone, her resentment has grown into bitter hatred.”
We reached a patio with a half-dozen white metal tables, each sporting a brightly colored umbrella. Barnes sat waiting for us in the shade of one.
Niki flung open her arms and twirled like a dancer. “Have you ever in your life seen a more beautiful place?”
I paused to take in the scene. Each section of the villa claimed its own foothold in the black face of the cliff. Every building—clean, whitewashed stucco, bearing the blue tile roof common to the region—connected to the others by a maze of stairs, patios, bridges, and flower gardens. Flagstone walkways, flanked by turquoise pools, some with tinkling fountains, passed beneath stone arches and vine-covered arbors. The chittering song of finches darting through endless hiding places filled air sweet with the delicate scent of honeysuckle. I would never have known that this was a build-as-you-go project. Every building, from the main house to the toolshed, occupied its space with absolute esteem, specifically placed, I would have thought, by a deliberate fiat of Nature.
“So, this is the little beach house you were talking about?” I said to Wes Barnes.
Barnes stood, grinning slightly. “It’s all relative, isn’t it, Adams?”
At that moment, a woman, squat, full-faced, with black hair combed tightly into a shiny bun, emerged from inside the house and was making her way toward us. In quick, short steps, she skittered across the patio, buoyant, arms open, her dark eyes glittering with welcomes. For Niki, there were hugs and beefy kisses to the cheeks. I was content to settle for a dainty handshake.
After the flurry of greeting, Niki introduced me to Dora Pappadopoulos, explaining, “She is the villa cook and housekeeper. And Dora, I would like you to meet Stuart Adams. He is a writer from America.”
“A writer,” Dora cooed. Clasping my hand in both of hers, she said, “and from America?” She winked at Niki, her face bright with the satisfaction of a matchmaking mother. “And such a handsome man he is.”
Niki’s eyes fluttered with mild embarrassment when she explained flatly, “Stuart has come to write about the dig.”
“But of course,” Dora said, her gay expression undeterred. Then, with a cook’s urgency she said to us all, “You must be starving. Niki, you show our handsome American guest where he will be staying. Then come; I have much for you to eat.”
I followed Niki up more stairs, through a covered walkway, to a small cottage perched on the edge of the cliff. She pushed open the door, and we stepped in. My luggage sat in the middle of the sun-drenched wood floor. The ceiling of the main room was log beamed; the walls were plastered and painted in blue pastel. Tapestries bearing images of the frescoes I recognized from my research on Akrotiri hung from every wall. A flower-print grouping of sofa, chair, and low coffee table filled the corner to our immediate left. Straight ahead, just beyond an arrangement of four wicker chairs and a table, I could see the kitchen. To the right of the kitchen was a pair of wooden, glass-paneled doors that opened to an outdoor area, probably a patio. To our immediate right was a high-back, cushioned wicker chair with a small table and floor lamp for reading. Beyond the chair was another door that led to the bedroom. I followed Niki through this door. On the far wall, beyond the bed, there was a writing desk with a window. Outside, the sea stretched into infinity.
On the desk was a copy of a book: Voice of the Aegean, An Exploration of Ancient Pialigarian Prophesy. The author was Anna Nicole Mikos. It took me a few seconds to realize that Anna Nicole Mikos was Niki.
“This is yours?” I said, picking up the book.
“Yes. It is my doctoral thesis. My professor encouraged me to publish.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you’d written this thing?”
“You never asked.”
I studied the cover. It was a photograph of Niki taken from behind. She wore a light jacket and shorts. Her hands were in the pockets of the jacket. She stood in the surf looking out into the soft light of an ocean sunset, her hair blowing in the breeze. The cover design was elegantly mysterious, a perfect expression of this woman I had so wrongly misjudged.
For me, the book raised a question. “So, why did Barnes hire a novelist to write about the scroll? Why not his obviously capable partner?”
“You have a much larger following,” she explained. “My readers are confined to a handful of academics, mostly critics. Is that difficult to understand?”
“I guess not,” I said, but for some reason, I suddenly felt insecure about Barnes’s expectations of my commercial value. Maybe it was because I was getting closer to the land of the Pialigarians, starting to realize that they were a real people with real problems. I’d never even met one, didn’t know anything about them. But I’d basically accepted the assignment to bring the world to their doorstep. Now I wasn’t so sure that I was the right person for the job.
Niki said, “I asked Dora to bring the book here because I thought you would find the information helpful. I told you there was a more romantic side to the story of the Prophet. It begins on page seventy-five—in case you are interested.”
I was interested all right. Actually I was feeling a sudden urgency to absorb every shred of information that I could. “Thanks. I’ll check it out.”
“So,” she swept a hand, fairylike, across the room, “you have your own little villa. You have privacy, far away from the rest of the house. Good for writing, would you not agree?”
Sure that my smile was broad enough to add a few more toes to my crow’s-feet, I looked at Niki. She was beaming with beautiful, childlike innocence, so eager to please. “It’s … it’s great,” I said. “I wasn’t expecting anything even close to this.”
She shimmered with satisfaction. “Come,” she said, taking me by the hand. “There is more to see.” She led me back through the main room to a wine cabinet that stood in the kitchenette. “Here is wine. On Santorini, there is barely sufficient water for the grapes, but the soil is rich, volcanic, unique in the flavor of the wine. All these wines are world class.” She pointed to each type as she described them. “If you like red and dry, there is Brusko. A good dessert wine is Vissando. You want white and dry? Nichteri.” Then she handed me a bottle that she’d lifted from the cabinet—not a wine, from the look of it. “Here is a local favorite that is unique to the islands. Ouzo. It has the taste of licorice with 45 percent alcohol. Be sure to eat something while you drink it.” She smiled mischievously. “Ouzo has a cult following that claims it will make your life calm and beautiful.” She took back the bottle and replaced it in the cabinet. “Come. There is one more thing that I must show you.”
J Douglas Bottorff 