An Aegean Prophecy

8

Stealing evidence wasn’t his proudest moment, but Andreas saw no choice. He had to study it in detail, and if he did so in front of Patmos cops there was no doubt his interest in the cross would get back to anyone on the island with an interest in his investigation. Vassilis died protecting whatever secret it held and Andreas wasn’t about to help give it away.

Switching crosses wasn’t all that difficult, even though he’d relied more on improvisation and luck than practised skill. He’d casually slid his left hand into his left front pant pocket and gripped the duplicate cross as the cop went behind the captain’s desk. The instant the cop turned to open the shutters, Andreas grabbed the evidence from the table with his right hand, and with his left, yanked the replacement out of his pocket and thrust it up in front of him. By the time the cop looked back, Andreas was slowly twisting the duplicate in the light, drawing the cop’s eyes to it while slipping the original into his right front pant pocket.

The only real downside he saw to what he’d done was that unless something truly nasty turned up in the Patmos captain’s file that Andreas could not overlook, a potentially crooked cop was home free. Andreas knew if he pushed for an investigation that ultimately led to prosecution the rookies would tell their captain everything, and his visit would become a key element in any defense. That one incontrovertible fact would be partnered with a lot of made-up ones to yield stories and headlines along the lines of ‘Chief Cop Plants Evidence on Local Cop.’ It was just that sort of take-no-prisoners media approach that broke his father. He wouldn’t risk subjecting Lila and the baby to the craziness. No reason to revive the bad memories for his mother either. No smoke, no investigation. Make that no roaring fire, no investigation.

Andreas sat in his rented car outside the police station and pressed his hand against his pocket. Still there, he thought. He didn’t dare take it out here; one of the cops inside might get suspicious. After all, why would he leave their captain’s office to sit in the parking lot staring at something unless he’d taken evidence? No, he’d find some other place to study it.

This must be what it felt like to be a thief, he thought. No, make that a novice thief who thinks everyone is watching him. Truth was, no one probably cared, but he couldn’t take the chance. He had to find the right place to study the cross and think. But where? He drove up the mountain toward Chora.

The Patmian School was halfway between Skala and Chora. Begun in 1713, it was among the world’s most renowned schools of Greek language and Orthodox theology, and now served as a seminary. Surely, a man sitting outside contemplating a cross would not be out of place.

He was almost at the school when he noticed a long line of buses idling along the roadside. They were just sitting there; doors closed, passengers inside, waiting for something. Then Andreas realized where he was, made a quick U-turn, and pulled up next to a pair of black wrought-iron gates hung on broad stone walls. This was the place to do his thinking. He got out and walked toward the entrance. A handwritten sign in five languages casually hung by a string tied to one of the gates, and two boys in the uniform of the Patmian School sat next to it. They were courteously telling the more aggressive visitors that the sign meant what it said: CLOSED FOR FUNERAL UNTIL 11 A.M. It seemed every place and person that mattered to Vassilis in life was honoring his funeral.

Andreas stopped in front of the boys, and one of them said, ‘Sorry, sir, we’re closed for another half hour.’

Andreas showed them his badge. ‘Official business.’

The boys jumped up and opened the gate. ‘Yes, sir,’ said one.

‘God bless you, and welcome to the Holy Cave of the Apocalypse,’ said the other.

It was the abbot’s duty to say the words that must be said when a monk goes to sleep with the Lord. But it was not his duty to prepare him. That was a job for others: to sponge — not bathe — him with warm water in the sign of the cross upon his forehead, chest, hands, knees, and feet; dress him without gazing upon his nakedness in socks, pants, and necessary vestments; cross and tie his hands, and place a prayer rope within them as his spiritual sword for defeating the devil; cover his head with his cap and his face with his hood formed in the shape of a cross; put on his shoes and belt; place him on a bed of straw; cover him with his cassock and sew it closed about his body with black thread, and with white thread sew three crosses, one at his head, one at his breast, and one at his feet; and as he was a priest, not just a monk, place the stole showing his rank upon him.

Kalogeros Vassilis’ body had rested on a wooden bier in the entrance to the main church, beside a burning candle, in the continuing presence of those with whom he’d shared his life who were now taking turns reciting from the Book of Psalms. The monk lay in the middle of the church, his icon on his chest, his fellows holding candles. This service would be a long one, in keeping with a departed monk’s long service to God. When it was over, his body and a procession led by acolytes bearing lanterns would follow on a journey, filled with prayers and stops along the way, to his final resting place within the monastery’s walls. Only his body, no casket or bier, would go into his grave, and once his body was blessed by a priest with the sign of the cross made by thrown earth and holy oil, the gathered monks would complete their thousand prayers for his soul and the Thrice Holy Hymn recited.

Only then it would be the abbot’s time to speak: to praise the virtues and spiritual struggles of the monk who had died.

The abbot was wrestling throughout the service with how to describe Vassilis’ struggles without addressing those tempests of the church that haunted every moment of his final days. They might even hold the answer to the reason for his death. How could he not speak out? But would it truly honor one who had built such a magnificent and meaningful life on earth to point out imperfections in the material he’d chosen for its construction? No, that would honor neither the man nor his life’s work. He would speak only of how Kalogeros Vassilis honored his church, how he labored to make life better for so many in keeping with its teachings, and how his reward was now to be with God in heaven. After all, why should my words praising the man do less for his church?

Besides, the abbot knew one did not advance in the church by being impolitic.

Bringing a stolen cross, even a just ‘sort of’ stolen one, to this holy, sanctified site might seem wrong to some, but to Andreas, it was the only place to come. He took his time walking along the wide stone path, lined on its sea view edge by stone benches, pines, and a low wall. A hundred yards dead ahead of the gate stood the gray, natural boulder steps and simple entrance to the centuries-old Monastery of the Apocalypse, and the beginning of Andreas’ descent to the Holy Cave enclosed within its whitewashed walls. A few steps down to a gift shop and a quick left back outside had Andreas in an inner courtyard. From there, steps twisting down brought him to the shared entrance of the Church of Saint Anna and the Holy Cave of the Apocalypse.

The cross still was in Andreas’ pocket, though he’d been gripping it from the moment he entered the monastery. He stood at the entrance and read the inscription: AS DREADFUL AS THIS PLACE IS IT IS NEVERTHELESS THE HOUSE OF GOD AND THIS THE GATE OF HEAVEN. He drew a deep breath, pulled the cross out of his pocket, and stepped inside. A stone arch divided the church into a modest front section and even smaller rear area. Each section of the church had a small window along its left wall, revealing olive groves meeting an azure sea. The distant landscape was one of rolling brown hills, tiny islands, and a bright blue sky.

The simple elegance of the place caught him off guard. Yes, priceless icons adorned a richly carved iconostasis inlaid with gold against the far wall, ornate silver chandeliers and oil lamps hung from the vaulted ceiling, and silver candle stands stood next to finely carved cabinetry beneath precious paintings; but he’d seen all that before, and much more, in so many other churches.

What commanded attention and drew so many pilgrims was what was not here: there was no right wall to the church. Running parallel to each other, the church and holy cave were essentially one, joined side by side. This was not a place for show. Plain wooden benches sat haphazardly on the cave floor. This was a place where one came for prayer and meditation.

It was four steps from the entrance to the front section of the church and another dozen to reach its far end. Andreas stared into the far right corner of the cave, his eyes drawn to a familiar icon, the Vision of Saint John. Strange, he thought, how it was beneath a copy of this icon that he’d snatched the cross from the cave-like office of the police captain, and now he stood looking at the original, in the cave of its inspiration, seeking answers from what he had taken.

Beneath the icon, at floor level and tucked behind a bit of discreet, brass tube fencing, was the soccer ball-sized niche where history records Saint John rested his head while receiving the Revelation. The niche was surrounded in hammered silver, and to its right a few feet above the floor and outside the fencing was another silver-wrapped, smaller niche. Here he placed his hand when rising from the floor.

Andreas stared at the simple cross; it seemed so out of place. He drew a breath and walked toward six tall-arm wooden prayer chairs against the left wall. He sat in the one closest to the window and stared at the cross.

He went over it as he had so many times before in the photographs: each leg was about one inch wide by one-quarter inch thick, and the longer no more than three inches in length, with a thin, black leather lanyard tightly wound and glued in place about it just below its intersection with the shorter leg. Andreas kept turning it over and over in his hands. Staring, looking for some clue, some hint of meaning.

‘Why this? You had to know they’d find the envelope and take it, so why were you clutching this so fiercely?’ Andreas realized he’d said the words aloud. He looked around, but no one was there.

He stood up and began to pace. Is this a symbol? Something tied to the monk’s past? Maybe it’s some obscure link to an esoteric scholarly reference? How am I ever going to figure it out? ‘ How!’ He knew he was frustrated. He took a deep breath and decided it was time to leave.

Andreas looked toward the holy cave. I ought to go inside, he thought. I might never have the chance again. Six or so steps from the left wall he had to duck to enter the cave’s space. It was much smaller than he’d imagined and the rock ceiling angled down more steeply that it seemed. So much so that he easily could touch the fabled cleft in the ceiling rock through which God spoke to Saint John.

Andreas wondered how many countless tourists and pilgrims over the centuries had wondered what Saint John saw from his place in this cave. Andreas crouched down between the two silver-collared niches and leaned over so his head was close to the ground in front of the fencing. Still clutching the cross in his right hand, he looked back toward the window. He saw sky. He stayed in that position for about a minute, thinking about nothing but what it must have been like. ‘Better get up,’ he said aloud, and pushed off from the floor with his free hand. He got up so quickly that for an instant he felt dizzy and stumbled back toward the cave wall. Instinctively, he reached out with his right hand to catch himself, driving the cross into the stone and dropping it to the floor in the process.

Andreas resisted an immediate urge to curse. That’s all I need to do, commit the sacrilege of destroying a cross — in this place of all places and with a baby on the way. Lila would be a nervous wreck if she knew. He bowed his head. ‘God forgive me,’ he said and crossed himself three times. He picked up the cross from the cave floor and kissed it. He noticed that the bottom part of the longer leg gave way under the pressure of his lips. It had separated from the rest of the cross somewhere beneath the lanyard wrap.

‘I can’t believe I broke a cross in the Holy Cave of the Apocalypse. And not just any cross, the stolen cross of a holy man during the time of his funeral.’ This was something he never could tell Lila. Instinctively, he tried to fix it, get the longer leg back in place under the lanyard.

Andreas knew he was standing in the place of Revelation, and perhaps that’s why he wasn’t so surprised when the thought hit him. He stopped trying to fix the cross. Instead, he slowly wiggled the longer leg, carefully separating it from the lanyard and glue, then with a firm tug, pulled it away from the rest of the cross. He looked at the broken piece, poked at it a couple times, and broke into a smile almost as wide as when Lila told him she was pregnant.

‘You wily old bas…’ Andreas didn’t finish his curse, but still crossed himself as he shouted, ‘It wasn’t just the envelope, you were trying to get him this!’ and held up to the light a tiny USB flash drive — a computer storage device small enough to conceal a million envelopes of information within the body of a hollow cross.