Spartan Gold

CHAPTER 45

SCHÖNAU, BAVARIA

Unbelievable,” Sam whispered.

He and Remi stepped to the wooden railing of the overlook and stared at the vista below. Finally Remi murmured, “I don’t think the word ‘beautiful’ even begins to capture this, Sam. Why did it take us this long to come here?”

“I have no idea,” he whispered back, then lifted his Canon EOS digital camera and took a picture. They’d been to Bavaria before, but never this area. “Even ‘breathtaking’ doesn’t seem to fit, does it?”

“Not even close. I can almost hear ‘The Sound of Music.’ ”

Below them lay the emerald waters of the Königssee (King’s Lake) Fjord. Measuring just over half a mile at its widest point and bracketed on both sides by thickly forested granite escarpments and jagged snowcapped peaks, the Königssee meandered its way from the village of Schönau in the north down to the Obersee, or Upper Lake, five miles to the south. Long ago severed from the Königssee by a landslide, the Obersee sat tucked away in its own oval valley surrounded by alpine meadows bursting with wildflowers and encircled by tumbling waterfalls, sights that attracted nature lovers and photography buffs the world over. A special boat service ran from Schönau to the Obersee’s Salet docks.

Aside from the occasional wake from the handful of electric tour boats that soundlessly plied the Königssee, the lake’s surface was perfectly calm, a sun-dappled mirror reflecting the greens and grays and ochers of the surrounding forests and cliffs. Everywhere Sam and Remi turned lay yet another perfectly composed alpine postcard.

Two-thirds of the way down the Königssee, where it narrowed to only a few hundred yards before widening again and curving southeast toward the Obersee, Saint Bartholomae’s Pilgrim Church sat in a clearing of trees on the Hirschau Peninsula.

An architectural hybrid of sorts, half of Saint Bartholomae’s Church was an old Bavarian ski lodge with white stucco exterior walls, steeply sloped gray shingle roof, and heavy wooden shutters painted in greens and yellows, while the other half was made up of a cluster of three red-roofed onion domes atop of which further rose two spires: one a windowless dome, the other, sitting nearer the water’s edge, a more traditional steeple, with a sloped hip roof and shuttered slit windows.

“Is it ironic that Hitler also loved this place?” Remi asked, “or just a little scary?”

Berchtesgaden, the municipality in which the Königssee sat, was also home to Adolf Hitler’s mountaintop retreat known as the Eagle’s Nest.

“No one’s immune to beauty,” Sam replied. “Even him, it seems.”

The question was, Sam and Remi knew, aside from the scenery, why exactly were they here?

Though they had deciphered only the first part of the latest riddle, they’d felt confident enough in their solution to immediately call Selma and ask her to arrange passage from Monaco to Bavaria. By midmorning, having thanked Yvette for her hospitality and promised to return and recount their exploration, they were on their way to the Nice airport, from there to Paris, and then to Salzburg, where they rented a car and drove the remaining thirty miles to Schönau am Königssee.

“What time does our boat leave in the morning?” Remi asked.

“Nine. Remind me to check the weather tonight.” Even now in late spring the Königssee valley’s weather was volatile, prone to days that could go from warm sunshine to brooding clouds to snow in the space of an hour. The savvy Königssee visitor was always armed with a spare sweater or Windbreaker.

Given Saint Bartholomae’s location, there were only two ways to reach it, either by boat from Schönau or by hiking in through the surrounding mountain passes. While the latter option piqued their wanderlust they knew it would have to wait for their next visit. Time was not their friend now. While their infiltration of Bondaruk’s estate had put them a step ahead, given how long the man had likely been pursuing the Lost Cellar, and given the scope of his resources, their lead could be short-lived. They’d seen no sign of Kholkov or his men, but still a touch of paranoia seemed warranted. Until they found whatever secrets Saint Bartholomae’s held and were safely away, they’d assume they were being watched. Moreover, they would assume their invasion of Khotyn had enraged an already frustrated Bondaruk. Whatever restraint the man might have thus far shown was probably gone. What they couldn’t predict was, given the lengths to which Bondaruk had already gone, what might he do now?

If the Königssee was the height of alpine beauty, Sam and Remi decided the nearest village, Schönau, epitomized the word “quaint.”

Home to five thousand souls, Schönau, which sat astride the stone-strewn river that fed the Königssee, was a sprawling collection of homes and businesses, each one a Bavarian architectural gem that seemed more chalet than building. On the eastern side of Schönau’s truncated S-shaped harbor, just south of a string of cafés, restaurants, and hotels, sat a curved line of boathouses whose styling seemed torn from the pages of a Vermont covered bridges coffee-table book.

Now, as Sam steered their car down the tree-lined road to Schönau, they could see the day’s last tour boats gliding in and out of the boathouses, their wakes forming translucent fans atop the emerald water.

A few minutes later they pulled into the parking lot of the Hotel Schiffmeister. Fronted by white and red awnings and balconies bursting with red and white and pink flowers, the Schiffmeister’s facade was painted in earth-toned rococo traceries of intertwined flowers and vines and spirals. As the valet saw to their car and the bellhop to their bags, they walked into the lobby and found the front desk. Minutes later they were being shown into their lakefront suite.

They each showered, wrapped themselves in the hotel’s heavy terry cloth robes, then ordered coffee from room service and settled on the balcony overlooking the water. With the sun falling behind the mountains to the west, the lake was backlit in a golden hue and the calm evening air was growing chilled. On the streets and sidewalks below, tourists strolled along, looking in shop windows and taking pictures of the harbor.

Sam powered up his iPhone and tapped into the hotel’s satellite Internet connection. “Something from Selma,” he said, scanning their e-mail. With typical efficiency she had compiled a report on Xerxes I and the Achaemenid Dynasty, one a condensed version, the other more detailed. Sam forwarded both to Remi’s iPhone and they spent the next thirty minutes learning about the ancient Persian king.

The eighth attested ruler of the Achaemenid Dynasty, Xerxes I took the throne at the age of thirty-five and wasted no time living up to his warlike reputation, first crushing a revolt in Egypt, then in Babylon, where he declared the Babylonian Empire abolished and promptly spirited away the golden idol of Bel-Marduk and had it melted down, effectively crushing the empire’s spiritual foundations.

Two years later Xerxes turned his wrath on the Athenians, who had fallen afoul of the Achaemenid Dynasty at the Battle of Marathon, where they’d thwarted King Darius I’s attempt to conquer all of Greece.

In 483 B.C. Xerxes began preparations for the invasion of Greece in dramatic fashion by creating a bridge to span the Hellespont, then by digging a navigable canal across the Athos Isthmus.

From Sardis, Xerxes and his army bulldozed north through Thrace and Macedonia before being stalled at Thermopylae by King Leonidas and his Spartans, who despite a valiant effort were killed to a man. Now unhindered, Xerxes continued south down the coast to Athens, where he plundered the abandoned city. This would prove to be the zenith of Xerxes’ invasion; shortly thereafter he lost much of his fleet at the Battle of Salamis, then most of his land force at the Battles of Plataea and Mycale in 479 B.C.

Leaving the army in the hands of one of his generals, Mardonius, Xerxes retired to Persepolis, in modern-day Iran, where he spent the remainder of his days dealing with political turmoil. He was eventually murdered by the captain of his guard, possibly at the behest of his own son, Artaxerxes I, who took the Achaemenid throne in 464 B.C.

“Oh, what a tangled web,” Remi said as she finished. Sam, ten seconds behind her, looked up and replied, “Not a nice guy, Mr. Xerxes.”

Remi smiled. “Are any of them?”

“Not often. Well, if we’re looking to Xerxes’ biography for clues about what Bondaruk’s after, the first thing that strikes me is the Bel-Marduk idol from Babylon, but history says it was melted down.”

“What if the history is wrong? What if he melted down a copy, made off with the original, then lost it somewhere?”

“Could be.” Sam typed up a quick e-mail to Selma and sent it off. He got a “Checking on it” e-mail a few minutes later. “Okay, other possibilities?”

“It seems everything went downhill for Xerxes after his invasion of Greece. He surrendered control of the army, went home, loitered about for a few years, then was assassinated. Maybe he lost something on the campaign that in his own mind cursed his reign.”

“And Bondaruk thinks recovering it will somehow balance the scales,” Sam finished. “Put things right for the Xerxes line.”

“As you said, the safe money is on Bel-Marduk, but history treats the Babylonian uprising as nothing more than an annoyance for Xerxes.”

“How about the Egyptian revolt? It was roughly the same time.”

Remi sighed. “It’s possible. The problem with history—especially ancient history—is that often only the highlights get the attention. For all we know, buried in an ancient text in some library or museum vault there’s a list of treasures stolen by Xerxes, along with their disposition.”

“Great,” Sam said with a smile. “Where do we start?”

“Take your pick: Cairo, Luxor, Istanbul, Tehran. . . . If we start digging today we’ll be done in ten or twelve years.”

“Not the best course, then. Okay, let’s see if we can narrow things down: Xerxes ruled for twenty years. In that time he embarked on three major campaigns: Egypt, Babylon, and Greece. Of the three, Greece was the most important and, arguably, a turning point for his reign. Why don’t we focus on the Greco-Persian war and see where that takes us?”

Remi considered this, then nodded. “Sounds good.”

Sam’s e-mail chimed and he read it. “From Selma,” he explained. “The history around the melting down of Bel-Marduk is pretty firm. Plenty of supposedly firsthand accounts of the event, from both the Persians and the Babylonians.”

“That settles it, then,” Remi replied. “Greece it is.”

They spent another hour researching the Greco-Persian War period of Xerxes’ reign, then took a break, dining in the restaurant balcony overlooking the now darkened harbor. The combination of the altitude, the breathtaking scenery, and travel fatigue had left them famished. They tucked into the Bavarian fare with gusto, enjoying a meal of kalte Braten, cold thinly cut roasted pork with bread and horseradish; Kartoffelsalat, a potato salad in a vinegary marinade; and salmon trout fillets simmered in Kristallweissbier and enhanced with a Franconian Bacchus wine served in the traditional flattened bottle known as a Bocksbeutel. Finally they washed down the meal with mugs of ice-cold Weizenbier. Their below-room-temperature choice drew curious stares from a pair of Schönau townsfolk sitting at a nearby table, but Sam’s one-word explanation—“Americans”—drew smiling nods and a free round.

Satiated and slightly tipsy, they returned to their room, ordered a pot of coffee, and got back to work.

“The point of the whole campaign seemed to be the sacking of Athens,” Remi said. “It was the seat of Greek power.”

“Thrace and Macedonia were just warm-up acts,” Sam agreed. “He saved up most of his wrath for Athens. So, let’s make another assumption: Xerxes subjugated the Babylonians by stealing and destroying the Bel-Marduk idol. Wouldn’t he be inclined to do the same thing with the Greeks?”

Remi was already scanning Selma’s report. “I thought I saw something. . . . Yes, here: Delphi.”

“As in the Oracle at Delphi?”

“That’s the one. Xerxes had his sights set on it.”

Located a hundred miles northwest of Athens on the slopes of Mount Parnassus, the sanctuary of Delphi, dedicated to the God Apollo, was a complex of temples that included the Corycian Cave, the Castalian Spring, the Altar of the Chians, the Stoa of the Athenians, and the Temple of Apollo, where the Oracle resided, as well as numerous treasuries, stadiums, and theaters.

In ancient times as well as modern the temple housing the Delphic Oracle was perhaps the most frequently visited in the complex. Truth seekers from across the Mediterranean sought out the Pythia of the day, usually a local woman chosen to temporarily serve as the Oracle’s earthly conduit.

Scientists had in the last few years relieved Delphi of its magical properties, suggesting the seemingly omniscient trance into which the Pythia would fall was in fact caused by methane, carbon dioxide, and hydrogen sulfide fumes leaking from the rock beneath the temple.

An attack on Delphi would have been in keeping with Xerxes’ modus operandi, Sam and Remi knew. Pillaging Delphi would have been tantamount to rendering impotent the Greek gods, similar to what he had done in Babylon with Bel-Marduk.

Remi continued, “Right after he crushed the Spartans at Thermopylae, Xerxes sent a battalion of seven thousand men to sack Delphi. According to legend they were turned away by a timely rockslide sent by Apollo himself.”

“Which may or may not be true, if I recall my ancient history correctly.”

Remi nodded. “There’s a lot of debate about that. Okay, let’s continue the assumption train. What if Xerxes’ raiding party wasn’t turned back? What could they have taken?”

“The Pythia herself, but unless Bondaruk’s looking for a skeleton, that doesn’t seem likely. How about the Omphalos?”

The Omphalos, or “navel,” was a hollow-cored pineapple-shaped stone that was said to have been modeled after a rock that Zeus’s mother, Rhea, wrapped in swaddling rags to trick Zeus’s father, Cro nus, who in a jealous rage was bent on murdering the newborn.

Situated within the Delphic temple, the Omphalos allegedly allowed direct communication with the gods, but again scientists had since speculated that the hollow nature of the Omphalos did little more than funnel hallucinogenic gases into the Pythia’s lungs.

Remi said, “No go. There are plenty of accounts of the Omphalos surviving the war. The problem is, who knows what the truth is? If the British had managed to steal the Declaration of Independence during the War of 1812, how anxious would the U.S. government have been to admit it?”

“True. What else?”

“There were plenty of treasuries at Delphi. Two in particular were said to have been centers of wealth: the Treasury of Argos and the Siphnian Treasury. They had some religious and cultural significance, but they were essentially small-time banks—gold and silver repositories.”

Sam shrugged. “Again, it’s possible, but Kholkov said Bondaruk was after a ‘family legacy.’ That sounds a little more personal than loot from an ancient bank robbery.”

“Plus, he said, ‘finish what was begun a long time ago.’ Sounds like a mission of some kind.”

Sam nodded and a yawn slipped out. “My brain is running out of steam. Let’s call it a night and pick it up tomorrow.”

Thirty miles to the north, Kholkov stepped off the jet bridge and into the airport’s concourse, powering up and checking his BlackBerry’s voice mail as he walked. He stopped suddenly and peered at the screen. The three men with him did the same.

“What is it?” one of them asked.

In response, Kholkov simply grinned and walked to a nearby cluster of chairs, where he sat down. He pulled his laptop from his briefcase, powered it up, then tapped at a series of keys. After thirty seconds he muttered “Gotcha.”

“You have them?”

“Not so smart after all, are we, Fargos?” he said under his breath. He looked up at his compatriots. “They’re just south of us, in Bavaria. Let’s go!”