The Barbary Pirates

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Thira, that Greek island that the Venetians call Santorini, rises sheer from the blue Aegean like a wall of jagged chocolate, its volcanic cliffs topped by whitewashed villages that cling to the crest like frosting. Thira is actually an archipelago of half a dozen islands, the broken remnants of an ancient crater. We sailed into its caldera drunk from wind and the dazzling sunlight of the Aegean, all colors brighter, all edges sharper, the babble of our sailors foreign, our mission misty, and my scientific companions as anticipatory as if they were on holiday. We were in legendary Greece, cradle of democracy, edge of the Ottoman Empire, in a place that looked as if it was created yesterday and could be remade by an explosion tomorrow. Our destination island was a crescent that enclosed a seemingly bottomless bay four miles wide by six long. Across this bay was the smaller island of Thirassia that represented, Smith told me, the opposite side of the old crater wall. In the harbor’s center was a small, low, rumpled island as pocked as the moon. It was smoking.

“This is what the world looked like when it began,” Cuvier said. “Rock and water.”

“Look at the strata of those cliffs, Georges!” Smith exclaimed. “Eruptions laid down like rows of bricks! We can read them like a book!”

“What shelter this would be for a navy,” Fulton added. “Cliffs you could cuddle under.”

“Or the worst lee shore,” Dragut said. “There are days when the meltemi blows that you do not want to be in here, my friend. It can be an evil place.”

“Evil? I can see the blue domes of half a dozen churches from here.”

“Christian churches are no shield against the devil when Satan awakes.”

“And mosques no shelter from an earthquake. Bad things happen to all of the pious, Dragut. The solution would be to use science to warn of disaster.”

“No, worse things happen to nonbelievers, like savants and French revolutionaries. And no one can warn about the will of God. I put my faith in Allah.”

“Cuvier,” I interrupted, “you described this as one of the oldest places in the world, but I’m not sure what you meant by that,” I said.

“Oldest and newest,” the scientist said. “Old in that it’s like our planet’s beginning, raw and mostly treeless. New in that when that isle in the center belches, hot new rock comes out. The island destroys and remakes itself.”

“It seems an odd place to hide anything you want to keep.”

“And a forbidding place if you want to keep treasure hunters away.”

We made for a small harbor at the base of the island’s cliff, the little port cast in shadow this morning by an escarpment hundreds of meters high. Fishing boats bright as toys bobbed by the rubble quay, their gay colors a contrast to the grim rust, brown, and gray striations towering above. The shoreline was so steep that Dragut could bring his xebec right to the short jetty. We hired donkeys for a slow, sure-footed trek up a switchback trail etched into the face of the somber cliff, the animals bristly, ears twitching, and their clop steady as we swayed. The route had no railings and was slick with manure, the donkeys blinking against the flies. Smith kept making us stop so he could peer at different clumps of ugly rock, as if willing the soil to speak. The cliff looked mute to me, and the view out to the other side of the vast bay was across an unnerving gulf of air. I was anxious to get off the precipitous trail.

At last we gained the top and had a better understanding of the geography of this peculiar island. Thira’s western edge was a crescent of steep cliff, its houses perched at the rim of the crater ridge like nests of birds. To the east of this scimitar the island sloped more gently down to the sea in a broad fan. There the ground was divided by stone fences into pasture, vineyards, and cropland, all of them brown in midsummer. It looked to me that little had changed since Odysseus roamed. Around was Homer’s wine-dark sea, spotted by whitecaps, the wind cooling us after the stillness beneath the cliffs.

“Imagine this slope of land continuing from the sea upward to a peak over what is now the central bay,” Smith said, using the sweep of his hand to fill the void. “It would be an immense mountain, visible for a hundred miles. A cone, like Etna. And then a cataclysm even worse than the one that consumed Pompeii and the peak disappears! In its place is a volcanic crater, hundreds or thousands of feet deep, filled with the sea. That crater is what we just sailed across.”

“But the bay is a league in extent,” Fulton marveled. “What kind of force would turn an immense mountain into such a hole?”

“What indeed,” the geologist said. “While Gage searches for ancient weapons, Cuvier and I are going to be exploring what really drives the world.”

“And what is that?”

“Nature herself. Imagine if we could harness her more fully!”

Our arrival at such a small island could not go unnoticed, but the Ottoman constable seemed more confused than suspicious about it, especially after Dragut offered that we would pay any special immigration fees the portly Turk might invent. We had French documents with colorful stamps the man couldn’t read, and surveying instruments he didn’t understand. Both helped make our mission seem official, or at least important, while at the same time so technical as to be incomprehensible. We said we were making measurements for the French Institute—possibly true—and that our findings were anticipated by the Sublime Porte in Istanbul, which was a cheerful lie. The fat functionary took his coins and wandered off to make a report by slow mail to authorities on the mainland. By the time it reached anyone with the rank to make a decision about us, we’d be gone.

Dragut went down to his ship for what he said would be a quick trading run to a neighboring island. “I will come back to collect you, I promise! Trust Hamidou!”

We meanwhile found lodging in a vintner’s house in the village of Megalochori, a rendezvous set up by Fouché’s agents. Here we were to secretly meet the young doctor whom Napoleon thought might someday lead the Greeks to independence from Turkey: handsome, charismatic Count Ioannis Kapodistrias. When Russia and the Turks set up the Septinsular Republic on the obstinately Christian Ionian Islands, the eloquent Kapodistrias became one of the tiny republic’s two chief ministers. He was only twenty-five, but had the magnetism of a Napoleon or Nelson. By force of personality alone he’d persuaded rebels on Kefalonia to stay within his tiny new nation, and was reportedly guiding it to a constitution based on liberal principles.

Now he was hoping to lead a wider revolt, and chase the same rumors that we were.

While we waited for Kapodistrias to make contact, Cuvier and Smith began surveying the ancient caldera from the cliff rim, trying to calculate the cataclysm required to make it. Fulton wandered off with his bagpipes, saying he wanted to experiment with oils to fill the instrument, and sketch the workings of the island’s windmills. I practiced my fencing against imaginary opponents, worked on temperance by hiking to island vintners for what I told myself was only a judicious tasting, and kept a celibate distance from island women who reminded me of my half-Greek Astiza, dark-haired and olive-skinned. Was I supposed to find some clue about her on this island?

It was a lazy idyll, for one dazzling Mediterranean day.

And then as I walked the trail on the cliff edge at the end of the second day, congratulating myself again on self-discipline, I saw two corsairs sailing into the vast bay at sunset, their sails the color of dried blood. They flew no flag or banner and made no sound, but their decks were crammed with men. Was this Ioannis Kapodistrias, bringing a small Greek army with him? Or Ottoman soldiers, come to catch him or us?

Or some other menace entirely?

Their approach triggered every self-preservation instinct I had.

I hurried back to where we were staying to announce we might not have time to wait for our rendezvous, or Dragut, either. We might have to hide.

Fortunately, our Greek patriot was already there.

Kapodistrias came cloaked and shielded with a broad hat, slipping in quietly from wherever he’d been sequestered here in Turkish territory, since he could be arrested for this trespass. His entourage consisted of only two bodyguards, and he carried no weapon. But once he cast his cloak off with a whirl, he impressed us immediately. The minister was a lean and handsome doctor with cheekbones that could have been chiseled out of Athenian marble. He had a voice that would give credit to the ancient orator Themistocles. Like many of the most able men, he was also refreshingly modest.

“I’m afraid I had no fleet to come with,” he said with a slight frown after I described the new ships. “No navy, no army, no diplomatic passport, and no time. Are you sure it isn’t a routine cargo or ferry to this island?”

“It looked like armed men to me. Did the Turks get word you’re here?”

“Possibly. But it might be pirates, too. In any event, our meeting must be brief.”

“Maybe it’s the gondola men,” Smith said. “We seem to be drawing enemies wherever we go.”

“Gondola men?”

“We were attacked in Venice by a fleet of gondolas. A beautiful woman threw a bomb at us, and a Muhammadan captain charged us two hundred francs to escape. Gage here says there’s some kind of cult called the Egyptian Rite pursuing the same legends we are.”

“By the saints: for a quartet of intellectuals, you attract quite the excitement.”

“Just Ethan. He finds trouble wherever he goes.”

Kapodistrias looked at me warily, as if uneasy that he’d been caught up with my dubious luck. “It’s imperative no one knows I was ever on this island. You realize that if my people did not possibly need French help someday, I wouldn’t have come at all?”

“Then help us with our mystery and we’ll investigate while you depart,” Cuvier said. “And tell Napoleon how you helped us. He can be a powerful ally.”

“A sensible suggestion from a famed naturalist,” Kapodistrias said. “I’m honored to meet Georges Cuvier, and have read of your important work organizing nature. You must know, however, that I fear France as much as I admire it.”

Cuvier nodded reluctantly.

“The French soldiers behaved poorly when they occupied our islands.”

“They were young men, far from home.”

“And not well disciplined. However, the revolutionary ideals that the officers brought were like a bolt of lightning. For the first time, every Greek dares dream of freedom from the Turkish yoke, of standing firm as we did at Thermopylae and Salamis. We don’t know if salvation will come from Russia, France, or Britain, but our tiny republic in the Ionian Islands is just the start of our hope. All of Greece deserves to be free.”

“Then we’re friends,” Cuvier said. “Bonaparte wants an independent Greece as counterweight to Turkey, Russia, and England. But the British have driven us from Egypt, the Russians have driven us from your own islands, and the English admirals dream of making the Mediterranean their own little lake. Napoleon asked us to sound out Greek sentiment for independence through you, but also to get your help investigating rumors of a secret on Thira that might benefit both of us.”

The Greek’s look was cautious. “Buried cities and ancient weapons.”

“Is it true at all?”

“Old stories. I’m glad your Englishman is enthralled by rocks, because there’s probably little else on this poor island. It’s a shattered volcano, home to a few poor fishermen and farmers. But stories persist, as stories tend to do. There’s a rumor that this island has a gate to Hades.”

“Hades!”

“I think that legend comes from literal truth. You can burn your hand in the vents of steam on that island in the harbor. This island was old, and hot, when Pericles built Athens. It has Venetian castles, Doric temples, prehistoric tombs, and stories of people who lived when religion and witchcraft were one. Pile up three thousand years of history and the web of legend, prophecy, superstition, and lies becomes as thick as the weavings of the mythical Arachne. Who knows what’s true and what isn’t in a place like this? Idols were their gods, and fable their science.”

“Sometimes the two intersect,” Cuvier said quietly. “I’ve seen drawings from Bavaria of an ancient reptile with wings like a bat. It too is extinct, I hope, but it looks as if it could have flown from the gates of hell. Perhaps our medieval iconographers drew from nature.”

“And there’s really a Greek rumor that the ancients had some kind of powerful weapon?” Fulton interrupted to clarify. “If true, it could instruct modern inventors like me. And Ethan here is our expert on ancient mysteries and hidden powers.”

“Is he now? Hidden powers? I would like some of those.” There was a twinkle in the Greek’s eye.

“Count Kapodistrias, the French helped my own nation win independence,” I said. “Greece will most likely need help as well. Napoleon can be a good friend or a deadly enemy. If we carry back word that you’re a friend to the ideals of the revolution, it will open the way for possible partnership—not conquest—in the future. In return, is there anyone in Thira who might help us with these old legends? The rumors have reached as far as Paris, and our charge is to determine their truth before greedier and less scientific people come here instead.”

He looked at me shrewdly. “Yes, a curious group. You have the look of an opportunist, your friend is a mechanic, and then we have scholars of rocks and bones. One Frenchman, two Americans, and an Englishman. Why did Napoleon send you?”

“Out of hope the Ottoman authorities would find us odd and inconsequential.”

“And why did you agree to go? Besides your rocks?”

“We have legal problems that Monsieur Gage caused in Paris,” Cuvier said. “This mission for Bonaparte will erase them, so we’re doing what we have to do—that’s the way the world works. Are you not obligated yourself to the Russians and Admiral Ushakov?” It was Ushakov who’d thrown the French off Corfu.

Kapodistrias nodded. “All men are in debt. All right, then. The missive I received from your agent said you have a clue for me that might help us find this secret.”

I took out the ring with its picture of dome and grave, with a man climbing out of the sarcophagus. “Do you recognize that building?”

“A church, perhaps. There are two dozen on this island alone.”

“Look at the dome. It’s broken, or half completed.”

“Ah.” He looked carefully. “But of course. Agia Theodosia! The Compromise of the Cannon!”

“The what?”

“The church and a Venetian fort rose in concert in the village of Akrotiri, faith through one gate and the state through another. But then artillery evolved, and as its guns were installed it became apparent that Theodosia’s dome was blocking the field of fire. The Venetian officers said the church should move, and the Orthodox priests said the fort should give way to God. It was proposed that the dome be lowered, but the monks refused even that—opinions are held strongly in Greece. Finally an impatient Venetian Catholic fired a cannon ball through the Greek Orthodox cupola, and threatened to destroy the entire church. Instead, the fathers reluctantly carved out a slice of the dome to allow the sighting of the gun toward enemies that, in the end, never came. The original dome architecture has since been restored, but the story of the ‘bitten dome’ is well known. There’s no other church in Thira this ring could refer to.”

I imagined the dome with a scoop out of it, one side concave, and admired the compromise. I think everyone should get along.

“Where is this church?”

“Not far—two kilometers, perhaps. But we had better hurry. If Ethan Gage is correct about those approaching ships we may be in a race, gentlemen, for the gate of Hades. And in that case, you will have to race alone.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s too coincidental we have all arrived at the same time. I will direct you to the church and wish you well, but I must not be caught with you. Do you have a ship of your own?”

“Gone to a neighboring island but promising to return.”

“Then look to your weapons and your wits, and hope your captain hurries.”