The Icon

SPRING 2000

NEW YORK CITY

1

The blue sky that had oppressed him for days was gone, replaced by a solid wedge of leaden gray and the sound of rain in the courtyard. He could still make out the towering brown mass that formed the rear of an old hotel, but the wet leaves and branches of the giant plane tree were now beyond his failing sight. The nurse constantly assured him that the tree was still there, and he would accept her word. It had, after all, been there forty years and more, long before he’d moved into these haunted chambers. It would be there after he was gone. This was reassuring.

He had become grateful for the ordinary things that could be maintained in this thoughtless city. It was no longer necessary for these things to last indefinitely. A few more years would do, perhaps less. Better not to think too much about that, his granddaughter kept telling him. Absurd. It was all that he could think about; it was the only thing that made sense to think about. His wife and son were already gone before him. He spoke to no one but the nurse and the girl, when she made time for him, when she wasn’t in London, or California, spending his money. He could picture her now, perusing the walls of some slick Santa Monica gallery, striding about in the track-lit backroom, making hasty decisions she could repent at leisure. A Hockney or Thiebaud being wrapped for packing, or else some new, even less talented artist she had just discovered. Abominable. Why had she inherited his interest but not his taste? Where did she put all the pieces she bought? She must have filled the walls of all her flats by now. It couldn’t be that she was hanging them on the walls around him, taunting his advancing blindness? No, he didn’t think she hated him that much, but he would ask the nurse just the same. Of course, he wouldn’t know if she was telling him the truth. After all, she was stealing his books. That was all right; she could have them.

Books had been his solace since childhood. They were an older and, he could now see, a far better love than the paintings, which had become a sad obsession, a bright flame burning up the middle decades of his life. The books never disappointed him. He didn’t worry about getting first editions, though he probably had many. He didn’t try to keep them pristine, never treated them as objects of art. They were for reading, preferably over and over again. Most of his books had seen hard duty, were well and proudly worn. He wanted what was in them. Not knowledge so much, or wisdom-every fool chasing wisdom in books, dear God, what idiocy. Stories, which was to say, the chaos of life made coherent, this is what compelled him. Lies, his father had called the novels he read as a boy. Yes, but what beautiful lies, what useful lies in a world of hard, unrevealing truth. Even the biographies, memoirs, essays: Boswell, Augustine, Montaigne, all liars. Who cared? They got at something that was real.

Could it be that he had gone to the paintings, sixty, seventy years ago, with similar expectations, similar needs? He could no longer remember, but it seemed likely. Somehow the values assigned by the world, by men like his father, the wealthy pack that plucked and hoarded, had clouded his mind. He became very good at the acquisition game, ceasing to wonder why he played. He had so many stories, which he remembered telling and retelling with pride, at the clubs in Zurich, or here in New York, tales of triumph, getting this painting from that one, or snatching it out from under the nose of that other one, his vanquished opponents sometimes sitting at the same table with him, laughing with him. The dilettante, the banker who could outduel the craftiest dealers. And the stories were always about the deals, never about the paintings.

Yet surely that wasn’t right. That was an oversimplification. Club talk had no bearing on his private impulses; the two were unrelated. He had loved the works he had collected, of course he had. There was no other explanation for the choices he had made. Love, not greed, had compelled the decisions that hounded his conscience. It was the only logical explanation. It was his only hope for forgiveness, that he had acted out of love.

He pressed the familiar button on the arm of the chair and sensed the bell ringing in the nurse’s quarters below. She might at least tell him which volumes she was taking, but that would be a confession, of course. How to let her know that he didn’t mind? He could even direct her to which titles might best suit her limited intelligence. As long as she was reading them, or giving them to friends. God, what if she were selling them? That would be hateful. No, if she were selling them she would have to be stopped.

The books. He could no longer see the words well enough to read, not even in the large-print editions. His granddaughter used to read to him, poetry mostly. She had a mannered delivery, but he suffered it to hear her beautiful voice, to hear her say anything at all. Recently, all he heard was the distraction in her tone, the moment’s hesitation when he asked her to read him this or that passage, and so he told her to stop. She protested, but he understood that she was relieved. Anyway, he seldom saw her anymore. Something had changed, she could no longer be the same old girl with him. The nurse was a miserable reader; only the Bible inspired her. He tried the books on tape, but it was impossible, some heinous actor’s interpretation of a text he couldn’t even grasp. So, no more books. It was the heaviest blow he’d suffered since his son’s death, a killing blow he suspected. And the girl wondered why he obsessed about the end! What else was there?

He pressed the button again but the woman was suddenly there before him, blocking the light from the window, her face in shadow. She was clever that way.

“I’m right here, Mr. Kessler.”

“I can see that.” How long had she been there, reading the thoughts on his face? Or worse, reading his lips? He had acquired the habit of speaking his inner musings aloud, or so a few people had told him.

“Do you want something to eat? You haven’t eaten today.”

Always with the food. He understood that these basic activities went neglected without her reminders, but he still resented the nagging. He must seize control of the conversation, command her, or else suffer an endless series of questions about his diet, digestion, hygiene. But her name wavered before him uncertainly.

“Do you want me to have André make you something? Some oatmeal, or a sandwich?”

“Diana.” There it was. Like the huntress, or the dead princess. Must use her name when he thought of her, stop leaning on lazy terms like “the nurse.” “Diana, I want to go to the chapel.”

He heard her sigh, ignored it. Her manipulations did not move him; he knew what he wanted. Contemplation, not food. She worked for him, damn it. He sat quietly, not repeating the request, determined not to sound desperate. Then she was behind him, and they were moving. In theory, he could do this for himself. The chair was motorized, and he’d had the lift installed years ago, after he had taken that fall down the narrow stairs. With his vision going, however, simple negotiations around the furniture had become perilous, and he was terrified of having a seizure on the lift, unable to call for help, dying alone in the tall, mechanized coffin. They might not find him for hours.

The lift door rolled shut, and Kessler clutched his armrests as they descended. He had never learned to like this contraption, but it had allowed him to move freely about his home, rather than become a one-floor recluse, with all of the limitations of mind and spirit that entailed. Truthfully, most days he did not feel like stirring from his bed, but something always drove him to move, cover ground, breathe fresh air. Sometimes he would even go to the park, if he was able to persuade the girl-no, use her name. Christiana. Chris to her school chums, such a bland, American name. Ana to him. He had felt so painfully close to the child before Richard died, and she to him, it seemed. Visiting often, accompanying him on his daily walk, an honor he had accorded none before her. Going to all the museums and galleries, speaking about art, German expressionism, surrealism. She was so curious about everything.

Then the newspaper stories surfaced, dirty deals during the war. His name wasn’t mentioned, of course, but his bank was, and he had been rather highly placed. Awkward questions arose within the family, seldom voiced but always present. And then his first serious illness, the errand undertaken by his son, which ended in his death. Her mother forbade Ana’s visits after that. Nobody told him this, but he knew it must be so. Richard’s wife hated him, blamed him for Richard’s death, as he blamed himself. After her schooling ended, Ana sought him out again, and they had a few wonderful years. He’d made his last trip to London with her, set her up with dealers and gallery owners, made purchases for her growing collection. Somewhere between his first stroke and her short, unfortunate marriage, Ana stopped seeing him so often. There were plenty of good reasons why, but he suspected the girl had simply grown weary of his dark moods, his feebleness of mind and body. She hadn’t grown tired of his money, that was certain. It was the last hold he had upon her.

They maneuvered through the dim ground floor of the brown-stone until they reached a pointed archway in back. Diana would not enter. That was fine with him. He had ceased wondering whether she was offended by his eclectic religious tastes, was simply spooked by the place, or had somehow intuited that it had been paid for in blood. It didn’t matter. Long his private preserve, the chapel had come to feel like more than that, a place apart from the rest of the world, a place no one else could enter, even had anyone wanted to. In fact, he could not remember when the chapel had seen another soul besides himself. Diana’s footsteps retreated. He gripped the motor controls and rolled through the archway.

The place had once been a sort of solarium, decades ago, but he had seen right away how to utilize it. The walls were reinforced, a domed oval ceiling stuck on, more Byzantine than Western. The six stained-glass windows came from a bombed-out church in Alsace. There were a dozen wooden panels from Hungary, depicting the stations of the cross. Also, some blackened, ornate candelabra from Italy, though he seldom lit candles in here. None of these objects was terribly valuable, not by the standards of his other possessions, but they all pleased and eased him in a way that other work could not.

On the far wall, lit softly from above and serving as altarpiece, was the Byzantine panel. Older by a thousand years than anything else in the room, his greatest treasure, though it had failed him in nearly every way. The Virgin’s face and hands had faded long before he had taken possession of the work. Now, except for those dark eyes, she had become indiscernible to his failing vision, creating the impression of a deep maroon robe wrapped about some spectral being. Not what the maker intended, but quite effective. Kessler wheeled himself the length of the chamber to sit before it.

Müller had never meant to give this one up. Safekeeping only, but when the situation became hopeless in ’45, he’d needed money to get out. Money, a Swiss identity, safe passage, Kessler had arranged it all. His own funds, not the bank’s. It was far from the only treasure to pass through his hands, and the bank or its managers had kept many when the owners vanished into the cauldron of war, but this was the only one that he had taken for himself. Contrary to the snide insinuations that he knew circulated about him, he had purchased all the other items in this room and in the rooms beyond after the war, legally and aboveboard. True, he’d had the upper hand over emotionally shattered churchmen and penniless aristocrats, whose temporary need outweighed their devotion to art. He wasn’t proud of that, but business transactions were never made at equal odds. Someone always had the advantage, and it might as well have been someone like him, who would properly revere the work.

No one knew the icon’s true history; at least it had never reached Kessler’s ears. Some said it had been in that village church for centuries. Others, that it had been owned by a long succession of despots, Greek and Muslim, priests, thieves, from Ali Pasha all the way back to the last Byzantine emperor, Constantine XI Palaiologos. It had almost certainly been made in Constantinople, long before the fall, even before the first iconoclasm. Shrouded in rumor, impregnated with mystery.

His blurred vision blurred even further, a dampness in his eyes. Not piety, or God’s grace, but simple fear moved him to tears. Fear of his impending end and what waited beyond, sorrow at all that was lost, loved ones, friends, a world that he understood, his youth and vigor, his sight and sense, all lost, irretrievable. He closed his eyes. Prayer was, as always, impossible. He was not such a fool as to ask anything of heaven, even an explanation, so what should he pray for, and to whom? Contemplation was the best he could offer, a meditation on his past and his sins, and before him the Virgin, most forgiving of those heavenly rulers, to witness his soul laid bare, to grant, if she saw fit, the mercy for which he could not ask. It was a pathetic act, like crying in the corner until mother came, rather than confessing his misdeeds to father, but it was all he was capable of. Heaven must meet him halfway, or leave him below.

He had nearly confessed to Ana, in the grip of one of his fevers. The weight of his guilt over Richard was terrible; it bore down on the whole length and breadth of his life, crushing everything. There was no one to tell, and no hope of comfort from that direction even if he did. What had he actually said to the girl? He couldn’t remember, but it could not have been much; she had never spoken of it afterward. Yet there was that drawing back on her part. Is that when it had happened? Again, he could not remember. All recent experience had become indistinct. His powers of recall were fragmenting, the wrong shards always stabbing to the surface-a first, unrequited love he’d forgotten for seventy years, random childhood terrors, the looming figure of his father, that sour grimace just before he struck. His mother, whose face he could no longer conjure up, just the softness of her hands, her voice.

He might have slept; it was unclear. When he opened his eyes again the room seemed darker, and the icon glowed with a radiance he knew from descriptions but had never yet seen. A smile forced the stiff muscles of his face, and he felt a presence behind him. That was not a new or even an unexpected sensation, but it was rare, only the third or fourth time he’d experienced it, and in combination with the odd glow around the painting, it must portend something. His scalp tingled, and he would swear he felt heat in all his extremities, even his feet, strangers these ten years. He maneuvered the controls with his right hand and the chair turned ninety degrees, so that he faced the gold-and-red window depicting Christ with the cross upon his shoulder. The shadows in the chapel had grown deeper, but light still seeped through the archway from the hall beyond, and interrupting that weak light, at the farthest edge of his peripheral vision, was a figure.

The old Greek priest, whom Kessler allowed to see the work years before, had told him that the magic had gone out of it. Of course, he didn’t call it magic. Energy, perhaps, or spirit, yes, the spirit had gone out of it, the old fraud announced, close enough to kiss the paint, gray head shaking. Apparently, he had known the icon before the war, had prayed before it in the sacred stone church of that little village in Epiros. He had recognized it as being far older than the locals guessed and possessed of powers older still, had sensed-how had he described it?-a living presence in the wood. Despite himself, Kessler had felt his breath catch at that description. Gone, the priest insisted, dismissing the spell he had cast in an instant. Something had happened, some desecration, some strange devaluation, perhaps stemming from the icon’s removal from its native soil-those damn Greeks. Whatever the case, the magic was gone. The work’s value was now strictly artistic, granting, of course, the power of art to inspire the faithful.

Kessler had suspected some attempt to delegitimize the icon in his eyes and compel him to part with it. Nevertheless, it had wounded him, so deeply that he was not even able to think about the encounter for a long time afterward. Perhaps on some level he came to believe what the old man had said. Yet things had happened, things written of in the past that found a place in his life, bracing up his ever-shaky faith. He had lived long, too long, maybe, yet he had outlived countless dangers, illnesses, injuries. Longevity was one of the powers attributed to the icon. Stories existed of men who owned it, or dedicated their worship to it, living 120 years, fathering children in their eighties. In Kessler’s case, long life had seemed a kind of mockery. He’d defeated illness but had never been completely free of it. There had been only the one child, the son whom he had lost. What was the purpose, the gain of such an old age?

At some point it had occurred to him that his reward might come in the next world, not this one, and that proved a difficult change in thinking. Because he was not sure he believed in a next world, was not even sure he believed in the Almighty. It was conceivable to him that there was such an entity, and such a place, but one did not arrive there without a deep, abiding faith. No hellfire was necessary for the rest. The contemplation of a black abyss, utter nothingness, was more than sufficiently terrifying. Then he had begun to see Her. And what unexpected joy that had caused. And fear, too, for she would not be there without a purpose, but he was hopeful that she intended him some good. She had ever been the source of mercy in all the tales that he knew, and if she could not save his enfeebled body, perhaps she could save that thing that was more important, if it was real: his soul. He thought of all these things in a moment as the figure hovered at the edge of his vision, waiting. Shame overwhelmed him, suddenly, sickeningly. Belief came from the heart, not the eyes. He had no right to demand proof, he, the worst sinner on earth. And yet, had it not been so with Paul? With all the disciples? And countless others since. Might not the eyes persuade the heart? Who was he to decide?

He had never yet been able to face the figure. Having tried the first time it appeared to him, years before, and been met with an empty doorway, he’d decided the time was not right. Since then, he had been content simply to sense the presence near him. More content, he suspected, than he would have been with the actual laying on of sight, for there would be a reason for it when that time came, and his craven heart feared the reason. But this was wrong, he must steel himself; he could not escape his fate, only face it bravely and with an open heart. He had never been brave about anything in his life; now was the time. She was forgiveness. His fingers hovered over the chair controls.

She was forgiveness. Like his mother, who had protected him from his father. A dark study, rain-soaked gusts outside the window, the man in his familiar suit, his familiar smell, tobacco and shaving cream, taller than God, the smile of a fiend, the heavy hand falling over and over again. He hated his father, a mortal sin; he was damned. Fresh tears rushed to his blind eyes. He shook his head. No, she would understand, she was forgiveness. He hesitated.

What if he were completely mistaken? If what he felt was simply Diana standing there, unwilling to enter his sanctum, waiting for him to finish his prayers to false gods? What if his doubting intellect had been right the whole time? Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Mother Mercy, all spinning away from him into the void, a fantasy, no salvation. Mother, wife, and betrayed son all spinning away, no reunion, no forgiveness. The hand fell again and again. All his life he’d feared punishment for his wrongs. Here, at the end, he feared judgment far less than its absence. If the end was the absolute end? He could not accept it.

Enough. His vision swam. The rain had increased to a roar. Enough, be a man, look. His numb fingertips manipulated the controls and the chair made a quarter turn toward the archway.

Intense, cramping pain in his chest and down his arm collapsed his mental processes for a moment. He either could not see or could not understand what he was seeing, and the small part of his consciousness that was neither afraid nor in pain was able to look on this condition with curiosity. Then something in his head popped and the pain diffused, though his heart still felt like a clenched fist, and his vision was too silky to make out anything. The figure had remained in the doorway, but he had not been able to really see it before his eyes failed. No, be true, he had seen it for a moment. A man, not a woman. Neither his father nor his son, but a young man, lean and bearded, face half discolored, the eyes wide with fear or rapture. Not anger; Kessler did not think it was anger. A man, not a woman. The Son, not the Mother, dear God help him, the heavier judge. He felt his useless torso slumping forward as the figure approached. The stilled terror within him leaped up once more, then was transformed in an instant into something else, a new emotion, hard to encompass. Sadness, perhaps, broad and profound, but that too was transitory, for sadness melted into wonder, wonder into understanding, then all was light.

2

Andreas clutched the narrow armrests and prayed for the earth to leap up and catch him. The plane seemed to have dropped out from underneath, sucking his internal organs along with it and leaving the empty shell of his body floating in the ether. Yet when he opened his eyes he found himself intact, still squeezed into the cramped coach seat, the aisle to his right, the fat, constantly shifting businessman to his left. A world of trouble awaited, and he could have used the disconnected hours above the Atlantic to compose his mind, but he had found concentration impossible. It had been years since he’d flown, and he was distressed to learn how fully age had caught up with him. His ears rang, his neck ached, his legs were cold. He could no longer filter distractions. No matter. He would not truly know the situation until he was on the ground, and anyway, he often functioned better on instinct.

The plane dipped again, and Jamaica Bay loomed up below. Twenty seconds later they touched down at JFK. The businessman smiled at Andreas.

“Welcome to Gomorrah.”

His suitcase was the first out of the chute-an omen, surely. He retrieved it from the carousel and went to look for Matthew at the arrival area, eyes casually searching every face for potential mischief. Old habits. He had long ago ceased to be worth anyone’s troubling over.

“Father?”

He turned, despite his caution; the voice was so clearly directed at him. Three meters distant, a young man, square-faced, powerful. The cheap dress jacket fit awkwardly, and Andreas sensed more than saw a concealed weapon.

“Andreas Spyridis,” the younger man said, more uncertainly.

Would it be now? How many moments like this had there been in the last fifty years, when he had to wonder if some old debt had caught up with him? His body tensed but his mind was calm, ready for whatever would happen.

“I am Spyridis.”

“Mr. Dragoumis sends me to meet you.”

Andreas uncoiled partway. He doubted that Fotis would have him shot at the airport.

“What’s your name?”

It was always the last question they expected, these couriers. It was important to surprise them, and to show no surprise on your own part. He had not told Dragoumis he was coming, but that was no matter. Fotis simply knew things.

“Nicholas. I work for Mr. Dragoumis, he waits for you now.” Serviceable English. Neither man was speaking his native tongue, though Andreas could not quite catch the other’s inflection. Not Greek, but a language he knew. “I am to bring you directly. For dinner.”

“I’m supposed to meet someone.”

“Mr. Dragoumis has telephoned your grandson. He will also be there.”

Russian, almost certainly.

“I see. Well, it seems everything is arranged.”

Nicholas nodded eagerly.

“Follow me please.”

A huge jet roared overhead as they made their way across the parking lot to a big blue sedan; American, of course. Nicholas held open the right rear door, but Andreas hesitated.

“I would prefer to ride in front.”

The Russian scowled. The request clearly offended his sense of professionalism, but he closed the rear door firmly and opened the passenger side. Andreas removed his gray fedora and slid carefully into the deep, comfortable leather seat. Queens always depressed him. The thick tangle of highways, warehouses, and tenements; cars rotting into the broken pavement. Only the season improved the ride, with the dirty slush or poisonous smog of previous visits replaced by clean air and banks of yellow forsythia, pressing through chain-link fences up and down the blocks of brick row houses.

“You live around here?” Andreas asked.

“Further out. Little Odessa, they call it.”

“You like this country?”

Nicholas shrugged. “Better than where I come from.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Two years.”

“You learned English before you came?”

“A little. Mostly here.”

“You speak Greek?”

“Not so good.” He swung onto Astoria Boulevard. “Not really. No.”

“Mr. Dragoumis likes it better if you don’t speak Greek, yes?”

Nicholas conceded a brief smile.

They turned onto Twenty-first Street, then a quick left and the car pulled up before a white clapboard house. The place was unremarkable, but for the profusion of rosebushes in the narrow strip of soil in front. The house appeared small, though in fact it ran quite deeply back from the street. A warehouse bracketed the building on one side, a semi-famous restaurant on the other. Fotis owned both. Andreas had been here before. He examined the roses, not even in bud yet, then followed Nicholas up the concrete steps into the house. A barrel-chested man came out of the parlor and met them in the narrow hall, crowding Andreas against the wall. The younger men exchanged a few words in their native tongue, then the new man led Andreas down the dim corridor. Black beard, black eyes, full of suppressed violence. There would be no pleasant conversation with this one. A soft knock at the door, a word, and they were in the study, Fotis’ inner sanctum. The man himself, gray as a ghost and sporting a huge white mustache, stood to greet them, covering the plush oriental carpet in great strides. The effort cost him, Andreas could see at once.

“My friend,” Fotis said with real warmth, “my old, dear friend.” They squeezed hands, rights over lefts, shaking their intertwined fists like happy children, like palsied old men. Andreas was always surprised by the affection he received from his old boss, ally, adversary. There was dampness in the corner of Fotis’ eyes, and he grinned a huge smile of expensive false teeth, looking his comrade up and down. Then his face turned stern, and he swiveled a fierce gaze on the young Russian. “You donkey, you couldn’t take his coat?”

Blackbeard murmured an apology and helped Andreas out of the heavy gray fabric. Fotis appraised the black suit and white shirt buttoned to the collar, and laughed, a short, barking exhalation.

“You look like a priest.”

“Your man seemed to think I was one.”

“Well, no wonder, dressed like that. Sit, sit. Coffee? Cognac?”

“Just water.”

Without instruction, Blackbeard slipped out the rear door of the study. Fotis clasped his hands before him and leaned back in the creaking chair, a satisfied look on his face. Andreas took him in properly now. An elaborate maroon smoking jacket, stitched with abstract designs, hiding his too-lean frame. Slippers on his long feet, a box of Turkish cigarettes on the table by his elbow. Behind him, a stack of large, framed canvases leaned face-away against the wall. In fact, there appeared to be more paintings hanging about the room than Andreas had remembered previously, and despite the poor light and his imperfect knowledge of art, he guessed that some were quite valuable. A winter landscape. A small, very old-looking religious work, the Annunciation or some such. Gold leaf from what could only be an Orthodox icon threw reflected light from a dark corner. His old friend had many identities, many roles he liked to play. Fotis the spy, Fotis the exiled politician, Fotis the respectable businessman. Now it appeared to be Fotis the collector.

“How was your flight?” Dragoumis asked, switching from English to their native tongue.

Andreas shrugged. “I’m here.”

“It’s hard on old men, and you are younger than me. Even once a year I find too much now. I may not see Greece this spring.”

“Oh, I think you will go.”

Blackbeard returned with a glass of tepid water, which was how Andreas preferred it.

“That is all, Anton,” said Fotis, and the young Russian left the room again.

“How is the restaurant?” Andreas asked.

“The restaurant,” the other groaned. “Quite successful. We have our loyal customers, you know, from the neighborhood, and now we are getting young people from Manhattan. Apparently, we have been written up somewhere as the best Greek food in Astoria.”

“Congratulations.”

Fotis waved a hand. “What the hell do those people know about food? Anyway, I am not involved much with the restaurant these days.”

“No?”

“I have an excellent manager, who doesn’t even steal. And I have other concerns.”

It was an invitation, but Andreas was not interested. He knew about his friend’s various activities, and if there were some new ones, it was no matter. Ambition did not impress him, nor even audacity in the pursuit of it. There was a sort of sad desperation in Fotis’ extralegal dealings-the desperation of a dying man trying to stave off fate with accomplishment.

“My son is ill,” Andreas said.

Fotis looked at him hard, sympathy vying with annoyance at the change in subject.

“I know.”

Of course he knew. Matthew, Andreas’ grandson, was also Fotis’ godson. Irini, Matthew’s mother, was Fotis’ niece. The two old men were hopelessly entangled. There was no chance of escaping each other.

“Matthew tells me that it’s bad,” Andreas went on, needing to speak. “Alekos is not responding to the treatment.”

“Maybe he needs better doctors.”

“They are supposed to be the best at that place. Mount Sinai.”

“There are better ones in Boston. But then, science can only do so much.”

“We do not have such illnesses in my family.”

“You must have faith.”

Was it a taunt? Spoken with such gentleness, it was more likely an old man’s forgetfulness.

“I do not think I am likely to acquire it so late in life.”

Fotis stared at him, unreadable, the ever-present jade worry beads clacking in his hand.

“My poor Andreou.”

They sat in silence for a minute or two, comfortable with it. Andreas sipped his water and finally decided to indulge the other man.

“Some of these paintings are new.”

Fotis’ eyes lit up. “I have become more involved in collecting the last few years,” he said eagerly. “I think it is my true calling.”

“Ah.”

“Never mind that, I know what you’re thinking. Only a fool would collect art for money. Too unstable. I enjoy it. I enjoy pursuing my own peculiar tastes, and I enjoy being surrounded by beautiful things.”

“This landscape?”

Fotis shifted to look. “Dutch. A student of Bruegel, I’m told. Beautiful, yes?”

“Very beautiful. And I see you have an icon.”

“A few of them. Not very old, or valuable. They have been greatly overproduced in recent centuries. This one is Russian.”

“You would like to collect some authentic Byzantine examples, no doubt.”

Dragoumis turned back around, a smile both cold and satisfied on his long, regal face.

“There is no real trade in Byzantine icons. Not enough of them in private hands. It’s all museums and churches, so it is hard to set a price. Their true value is spiritual.” Fotis the pious.

“Of course.”

“You know that Kessler is dead.”

Andreas sighed. It had occurred to him from the start that Kessler and the icon were behind this forced visit.

“I had heard.”

“Keeping up those contacts. Good.”

Andreas shrugged. Why bother saying he’d read it in the New York Times? Fotis assumed that all information must come through intelligence channels. Let him think that Andreas was still plugged into the network.

“So,” Fotis continued, “what does our fine government of Greece think of this development?”

“What should they think? All they would know of Kessler is what you told them.”

“You believe so? In that case the file is empty, because I told them absolutely nothing about Kessler. Why would I?”

“Neither did I. Perhaps they have other sources. You won’t learn anything from me.”

They became quiet again. Andreas wondered where the bathroom was.

“The granddaughter is executor.” Dragoumis slid a long brown cigarette from the pack and lit it. “She is looking to have the whole collection appraised.”

“Have you offered your services?”

Fotis laughed, blowing swirling orbs of smoke.

“I’m a small-time collector. I assumed she would go to one of the auction houses.”

“Logical.”

“But it seems she has loftier goals. Her lawyer has been speaking to some of the major museums. I can see it now, the Kessler Wing of the Metropolitan.”

Andreas’ radar began sounding.

“Why the Metropolitan?”

“Just an example, but it’s the most obvious choice. Kessler concentrated on medieval. There aren’t many places in this country that could do justice to that. None of the other New York museums.”

“Why New York? Why not Europe?”

“Perhaps they will try Europe. New York was his home, though. Bad history across the Atlantic. The Swiss wouldn’t touch him. Probably not the Germans, either. Anyway, you’ll never guess whom the Met is sending over to look at a few things.”

He did not have to guess.

“Your grandson,” Fotis continued. “The world is small, my friend, no?”

Andreas managed not to show alarm, but he was unnerved. Dragoumis was older, sicker, self-deluding, but here was why he had always been better at these games. He was relentless, and he constantly found new ways to unbalance you.

“Fotis,” he said quietly, without either threat or plea, “leave Matthew out of this.”

“My dearest Andreou, what have I to do with it? You think they consult me?”

“How do you know about it?”

“Matthew told me. Look now, the chief medievalist is an old man, not young and handsome like our boy. Byzantine is his specialty; that’s your doing, not mine. All those years taking him to churches and museums. Of course they would send Matthew. The girl will love him, the museum will get the icon, and our boy gets the credit. Where is the harm?”

“No harm. If that is all there is to the story.”

“Truthfully? I begin to wonder.” The old man waved his cigarette around casually. “Because here you are.”

“My son is ill.”

“Your son has been ill for months. Kessler died ten days ago.”

Andreas leaned back in his chair, desperately wanting to be out of this place, to be anywhere else but in the lair of this sad, scheming creature. “You have lived too long, Foti, you see plots everywhere. I came to see my son, no other reason.” He stood. “Have your man take me to my hotel. I can never find a taxi in this neighborhood.”

Dragoumis stubbed out his cigarette and looked up at his old friend with large, watery eyes, seemingly on the verge of tears. As if he were the injured party! Despite himself, Andreas almost clapped his hands at the performance. Fotis the wronged.

“I have offended you, I am sorry. Please, sit. Please, my friend, let us not part in anger.”

Andreas sat, but his mind was made up to go.

“I withdraw my question,” Fotis continued. “If I have expressed doubts, there are reasons. I must trust that you too have reasons for not sharing your plans with me. Now that you understand Matthew is involved, you may adjust your actions in a way that will not direct harm to his interests.”

“What the hell is it that you think I’m up to? You think the Greek government wants that icon? You think they would send me to get it?”

“What have you heard of Müller?”

Now Müller. The man was shameless.

“Only that he’s dead.”

“Really. I have heard that he is here, in New York.”

Andreas shifted uneasily in his chair, willing himself not to respond, but failing. “From whom?”

“An unreliable source, I admit. Still, another thing I thought you should know. It would make sense that he would come. You never believed that he was dead.”

“I don’t want to discuss Müller. I need to see Alex.”

“Yes. I have been to the hospital twice. He refused to see me the first time.”

“I am sorry to hear it.”

“But not surprised. He may resist seeing you also. Are you prepared for that?”

Prepared for it. How did one prepare for rejection from an ill son, a possibly dying son? Andreas had lived through many terrible things, but he could imagine nothing worse than such a rejection, and would not let his mind dwell on it.

“With Matthew’s support, I hope to overcome resistance.”

“Excellent. Look now, let us forget this gloomy talk for an hour. Come into the parlor and have a cognac with me.”

“I should see Alekos immediately.”

“Visiting hours are late. We’ll all go, after we eat.”

“No, I will go with Matthew.”

“Of course. He is joining us for dinner. Then you will both go to see Alex.”

The schemer had thought of everything. Anyway, the food would be good, and Matthew’s company would make the evening tolerable. Andreas did not drink, but he would have a cognac with Fotis. It seemed like just what he needed.

“You have the good Metaxa?”

“Better. Remy Martin XO.”

3

The night before, Matthew had the dream again. A painting vanished, a masterpiece of the collection which he was expected to find, but he couldn’t remember what it looked like. A group stood before the empty wall, declaiming the lost portrait’s beauty, the lips, the eyes, the otherworldly flesh tones, and he tried to build an image in his mind, but it shifted, eluded him, like faces do in dreams. The museum he knew so well became an impenetrable maze, with no Ariadne to help him. Darkness came down. Strange sounds distracted. The search went before and behind, he chased, he was pursued. In a dim basement chamber he saw what must be the image on the far wall, but the path was uncertain, no course took him directly there. No help, he was alone. And then not alone, as a terrible presence filled his consciousness. He always woke then.

They drove in silence, Matthew at the wheel of his colleague Carol’s borrowed Taurus, Andreas settled deeply into the passenger seat. The life had gone out of the old man as soon as they stepped through Fotis’ front door into the cool evening air, and it became clear that the animation he had shown over dinner was an act, for Fotis’ benefit. They were always performing for each other. Coming off the Triboro Bridge, Matthew paid the toll and accelerated away, glancing at his grandfather. Hat and collar obscured his face, and shadow alternated with pink streetlight across the barely visible features. Matthew had seen Andreas in Athens two years before and been struck once again by how little he aged. Still sharp-eyed, clear-minded, grip like a vise. At seventy-seven he could have passed for a vigorous sixty. This night he seemed old, stoop-shouldered and shuffling. His eyes wandered, as did his mind. Of course, it could be fatigue from the flight.

The car shaped the looping entry to the FDR Drive, and Matthew turned off almost immediately on 116th Street. Shouts and the metallic bang of a backboard reached them from a dimly lit basketball court. Tall brick projects rose up around them.

“This is Harlem?” Andreas asked.

“Spanish Harlem, I guess.”

“It’s ugly.”

“Yeah, well.”

“This is an ugly city.”

“So is Athens.”

“A strange comparison. Have I offended your local pride?”

“Modern cities are ugly. New York has some beautiful places.”

“ Athens has history.”

“Too much history.”

“It’s true. It’s true that the Greeks are undermined by their history; it is a common phenomenon in Europe. Americans are more willing to attempt things. This is their strength, but it also leads them into much foolishness. They change friends constantly, abandon old allies. This is why the world distrusts America.”

Matthew had heard it all before but was pleased to have the old man sounding like himself.

“What is the latest news?” Andreas asked.

The looming black monolith of Mount Sinai appeared on the left, checkered with tiny squares of light. Heaviness fell upon Matthew at the sight of it, dulling his mind like an anesthetic.

“Apparently his blood cell count is stable, but they don’t know why, and it could drop again any time. The infusions don’t seem to do much good anymore.”

“So they cannot help him?”

Matthew balked, rolled his shoulders. One could go day to day without ever asking that question. His mother never wanted to know the long-term prognosis. She simply prayed to God the Father, Christos, Panayitsa, the whole useless crew. Yet it was a fair question, and the father of his father had every right to ask.

“They’ve made some progress, but the toll on his body has been pretty heavy. After every one of those treatments he’s just…I’m beginning to wonder if it’s worth it.”

“They should send him home. A man should be at home to face a thing like this.”

“It’s not that simple, Papou.” The sharpness in his voice surprised him. “We can’t give up on him improving. And I’m not even sure he’s strong enough to go home. Mamá would have to do everything for him, which she would try to do, but she’s a wreck right now herself.”

Andreas patted his shoulder.

“Do not think too much about things before it is time to face them.”

At that hour upper Fifth Avenue was nearly empty, and they were able to park near the hospital entrance. The long, tangled branches of elm trees swayed overhead, softly clacking. Andreas looked up at them for a few moments. Then Matthew took his arm and they went in together.

They had shaved the beard, but a heavy stubble had grown back. Where there had once been thick waves of black hair, only a thin gray buzz cut remained. His cheeks were sunken, and the body beneath the sheets seemed to have lost a good deal of mass. To say that Andreas did not recognize his son would be wrong. The forehead, long nose, sullen mouth, the small scar on the chin remained instantly familiar, but the general alteration of the body was terrible. What, fifty-three now? His ancestors had lived well into their nineties, as Andreas grimly expected to do. The son should not precede the father.

The old man stood rooted in the doorway. Had Alekos been awake, Andreas would have strode purposefully into the room, giving nothing away; but since the boy slept, he allowed himself a little time. He had not watched his son sleep since he was a child. He had not seen Alekos at all in five years. That last visit they had put some of the past bitterness behind them, reached some understanding common to their shared sadness. Yet a truce was not a friendship. They had not made the effort to know each other years before, and it was impossible to bridge the distance all at once. With the ocean between them, they had grown apart once more. Perhaps there had been another revelation of past shame, from Fotis, or from Irini, the wife. Perhaps it was simply old hurts that had been picked at again and festered.

Matthew went around the bed and stood by the window. Andreas could not see what the boy saw, but he knew from the turns they had taken that he faced east, toward the river. From the back, his grandson-broad shoulders, round head, black hair-looked like his father. The resemblance was otherwise slight, nor did Matthew particularly look like his mother. His grandmother, Andreas thought, not for the first time: my wife. The boy looked just like dear, dead Maria.

“Babás.” A dry whisper from the bed. The old man turned to face the narrow-eyed gaze of his son. Had he been awake all along?

“Ne,” Andreas answered. He did not trust himself to move swiftly, so he shuffled like an invalid to the bed.

Alex tried to pull himself up. Desperate to help, the old man hesitated for fear of a rebuke. Matthew came over instead, dragging his father upright. Andreas quickly rearranged the flattened pillows, and Matthew set Alex back against them. The sick man pointed to a cup on the bedside table, and Matthew filled it with water from a white plastic pitcher. Alekos took it with a steady hand and sipped slowly without looking at them, in no hurry to speak further. Andreas’ legs trembled, but he would not sit.

“How is that silent sister of mine?” Alex finally asked, in English, for Matthew’s sake, though the boy’s Greek was good.

“Well. The children keep her busy, you know, and the husband is no help.”

“Always defending her.” But Alex smiled, a tiny lift at the corners of his mouth.

“When I am with her, I defend you.” And then, as an afterthought: “She will be coming to see you soon.”

“Yes, as soon as you report on my condition. I have no doubt they will all be at my bedside, with holy water and a priest. I will count on you to keep the priest away.” Andreas knew better than to answer, and Alex looked to his own son. “You picked him up at the airport?”

“Fotis did,” Matthew responded.

“Of course. The conspirators.”

“He sends his best.”

“You must send mine back, at the next planning session.”

Matthew laughed. “What are we planning?”

“God knows,” Alex rasped. “Ask your Papou.”

“He sent a man to get me at the airport,” Andreas said. “I was not expecting him. I haven’t seen Fotis in years.”

“How was today?” Matthew asked quietly.

His father’s hand flipped palm up, then palm under, a gesture both of the others recognized.

“The same. They did some tests. They say I may go home soon. Babás, sit down.”

Andreas nearly fell into the hard chair. He unbuttoned his coat and put his hat in his lap.

“That’s great news,” Matthew answered. “So your blood looks better?”

“A little. It’s not worse, anyway.”

“But in that case, shouldn’t they go on with the therapy? How do they know it won’t continue to improve?”

“It might. They tell me it might, but they don’t believe it, and I don’t believe them.” Alex spoke without anger. Profound weariness seemed to be the controlling tone in his voice. “Anyway, I can’t take any more of the therapy now. I need a rest. I can’t rest in this place.”

“Of course not,” Andreas insisted. “You should be home.”

“Well now. I think you may be the one who needs a rest, old man. You look worse than me.”

Andreas could only manage to stare at his son, as at a car wreck, unable to take his eyes away, aware of all the naked emotions on his face but unable to hide them.

“I am well. It’s the airplane. I have never gotten used to them.”

The look on Alekos’ face was more gentle than Andreas had seen since his son was a child, and the past overtook him just then in a numbing wave. He reached to unbutton his coat and realized he had already done so; he unbuttoned the collar of his priestly white shirt instead.

“Matthew, get your Papou some water,” Alex commanded.

“No,” Andreas said. “We passed a coffee machine in the hall, you remember?”

“You sure you want coffee this late?” The boy’s concern was kindly, but anger rose in Andreas instantly.

“You think I’m some old woman? I will get it myself.”

“No, it’s all right.”

“Black, no sugar,” Alex said from the bed.

“Yes,” Andreas agreed, “your father knows. Thank you, my boy.”

Then Matthew was gone, they were alone together, and Andreas no longer knew why he had schemed for this chance, what he had intended to say.

“Fotis told me you would not see him at first.” He spoke Greek now.

“Are you surprised?”

“So much time has passed. Why do you cling to your anger?”

“Do you think these things go away because time has passed? You would like to think that, wouldn’t you? That there is some clock on your sins, and when so much time elapses…”

“We were not discussing my sins.” Andreas heard the hardness come into his voice, despite himself.

“No? What were we discussing? My mind wanders, you see.”

“Your happiness.”

“My happiness, yes. Always a great concern of yours. Anyway, I saw him, so why hound me?”

“Rini made you.”

“I became too tired to fight about it, just like I am too tired to fight with you now.”

“I don’t want to fight. I am grateful to you for seeing me.”

Alekos seemed almost shocked, or played well at it.

“You’re my father. You’re family.”

“Fotis is family.”

“Fotis is a relation. You are blood. Anyway, what am I going to say to Matthew, ‘Tell your grandfather to wait in the hall’?”

“Once you might have done that.”

“I had strength then.”

“So is that the reason I am here? For Matthew’s sake?”

“You know, this isn’t about you, old man. This is not about your forgiveness. This is about me. You came, God knows why. I don’t want to know your other reasons. You’re here. It’s right that you should be. Leave it alone now, don’t ask for anything else.”

Alex slumped back on his pillows. Fool, Andreas scolded himself, stupid ass, exhausting him this way. Leave it alone, indeed.

“Fotis is involving him in something,” Alex said. “About that damn icon. You know about it?”

“I learned about it today.”

“You’re not involved?”

“No.”

“How the hell would I know if that’s true?”

“It’s true.”

“Keep him out of it. Leave my son alone. Tell the schemer to leave my son alone.”

“It’s for the museum. There is no harm in it that I can see.”

“You think Fotis hasn’t arranged it somehow? The man has his fingers in everything.”

“I do not see where the gain is for him. The museum getting the icon would be the end of his hopes for it.”

“How can we know if it is that simple? Who told you about Matthew’s involvement?”

“Fotis.”

“And how did it seem to him? How did he feel about it?”

Alex had a scientist’s mind, untrained in the ways of deliberate misdirection. This was no doubt one reason that he resented his father and uncle: not just because duplicity was so much a part of their lives, but because he himself was so easy to dupe.

“Pleased,” Andreas answered.

“I am not a spy, of course, but when that man is pleased about something, I worry. Keep my boy out of it.”

“It’s for his work.” Work was the closest thing to sacred to Andreas.

They heard Matthew’s voice in the corridor, speaking quietly to the nurse. Alex leaned forward again, straining.

“At least speak to him. Tell him the history.”

Andreas’ mouth was dry. How much of the history did Alex know? Who told him? Not Fotis. Maria? Himself, some forgotten evening long ago? His son was staring hard at him.

“No, you can’t do that, can you? Just tell him to stay out of it, then. Do that for me. He won’t listen to his father, but he will listen to you.”

“I’m not so sure.”

Matthew walked back into the room.

“Will you do that for me, old man?”

A dozen calculations collided in Andreas’ brain, all of them unsolvable with his son’s face looking at him that way.

“I will speak to him.”

Matthew touched his shoulder, and when Andreas turned the boy handed him the paper cup of coffee. The old man’s stomach lurched, and sourness crawled up his throat. He placed the cup on the arm of his chair with his hand around it, warming his stiff fingers.

“Your Papou has worn me out,” Alex announced. “You’ll have to leave soon.”

“We’ll come back tomorrow.”

“Your mother will be here tomorrow. She’ll get some straight answers. Who knows, maybe the next time you see me I’ll be at home.”

“That would be wonderful.”

Andreas rose then, too quickly, and touched the edge of the mattress to steady himself.

“I’m worried about you, Babás.” Alekos’ voice was quiet. Andreas grabbed his son’s hand with sudden force and squeezed it. The face remained neutral but the hand squeezed back. The old man found his balance and straightened.

“I am the only one here who does not need any worrying over.”

“I should have called the hotel,” Andreas said at last. “I hope they have held the room.”

Matthew accelerated down the empty avenue.

“It’s absurd for you to stay in a hotel when Ma is all alone in that big house. She would be happy to have you.”

“She would not refuse me, but it would be awkward.”

“So you could stay with me. It’s not a big apartment, but there’s room. You would be a lot closer to the hospital.”

“You will have to trust that I prefer it this way. Now please tell me what the nurse said.”

“You never miss a thing, do you?” The light stopped them at Eighty-sixth street. “No prognosis, you have to speak to a doctor for that. She did confirm that they’ll probably send him home soon. She also warned that he might be right back there in a week.”

That must be avoided, Andreas thought, but it would be Alekos’ decision.

They were moving again, past the massive, spotlighted edifice of the Metropolitan Museum, columned and crenellated, bleached stone and huge, colorful banners. Matthew’s museum.

“We must get him some morphine,” Andreas said.

“They’ll give him something, I’m sure. He hasn’t been in a lot of pain so far.”

“That may not last, and we cannot count on the compassion of doctors. I mean that we must procure some morphine ourselves. In case of need.” He felt the words sink in during the silence that followed.

“Fotis could get it,” Matthew said.

“No doubt. We will ask him, if we have no other alternative.”

“You don’t like asking him for favors.”

“We have a complicated relationship, your godfather and I. I try to make distinctions between business and friendship. No such distinctions exist for him.”

“You know Dad doesn’t like him.”

“I’m sure your father’s feelings are also complicated. I think he mostly mistrusts him. He feels Fotis may try to involve you in one of his schemes.”

They turned east on Seventy-second street. Matthew did not respond right away, but Andreas waited him out.

“I don’t think Fotis is doing so much scheming these days,” the younger man finally said. “He’s feeling his mortality. He wants to do the things that give him pleasure, wants to be with his family, which is basically us. I don’t think he’s looking to stir up trouble.”

“Perhaps not.” He must be careful; the boy was very close to his godfather. “Trouble has a way of finding Fotis, however.”

Matthew smiled at that.

“He says the exact same thing about you.”

“Yes? Well, I won’t deny it. We have both had difficulty avoiding trouble. We sought it out so often as young men that it has become friendly with us. I tell you, though, I was always the amateur. Fotis was the expert.”

Matthew’s face was hard to read. Confusion or annoyance sat on his forehead and in the muscles around the eyes, or perhaps he was just concentrating on the right turn onto Lexington Avenue. They were close to the hotel now.

“It will be on the left,” Andreas said. “A little further on.”

“Where do you find these places?”

“Friends recommend them.”

“They must be poor recommendations, since you never stay in the same place twice.”

“Just another habit of mine. Right there, I think. The green awning.” Andreas shifted in the seat to observe Matthew as they pulled into an open curb space before what appeared a pleasant old second-rate establishment. “I hope I have not offended you. You know I am fond of your godfather, but I say that with a full knowledge of who he is. He is not an easy man to understand. It would be better for you, and better for your father’s peace of mind, if you did not become involved in any business arrangement with Fotis. Not even an exchange of favors.”

Matthew was silent, staring out the windshield. He would never be uncivil, but this talk had made him uncomfortable. Matters might have progressed further than Andreas had anticipated. He would have to speak more openly, but not now.

“Are you free anytime this week, my boy? Tomorrow, even?”

“Tomorrow is tough. I’ll call you when I see how things are shaping up.”

“Very well.”

“Come on, let’s get you checked in.”

4

In the beginning was the word. In the end, words weren’t worth much. At the church services he surreptitiously attended, Matthew quickly lost the thread of the words spoken, sung, lost his grip on the Greek language, found it transformed into pure music, pure sound. Sound mixed with the smell of incense, the glint of pale lamps off gold leaf, the dark eyes of saints in the iconostasis. Some days it was enough to invoke a sort of trance, which was soothing to the soul or at least the psyche. Was it faith? He knew that if he followed the words, if he attempted the journey in any sort of intellectual manner, it all felt ridiculous. He had to let himself go. His former girlfriend Robin, a lapsed Catholic, had experienced the same phenomenon. Christ Hypnotist, she called it.

In Greece, in his grandfather’s village, an old priest had shown Matthew a poor black-and-white photograph of the Holy Mother of Katarini, taken before the war, before its disappearance. His godfather’s descriptions, the text he had read in a handful of books, words, had all been rendered pointless by a single glance at a sixty-year-old, five-by-seven image. In an instant, he had understood everything. The longing, the hope, the despair, all present in the swirl of deep gray color, in those black eyes. Now, if his godfather was right, he was mere minutes from seeing the real thing. And words would fail once more.

The brownstone looked like several others on the street, except for the iron bars on the windows and the discreet surveillance camera by the door. The buzzer made no noise audible from the outside, but Matthew waited. His attention was focused on the grill of the speaker when the door swung open.

She wasn’t the maid, that was certain. Early thirties, attractive, dark blond hair, circles under her pale blue eyes, an expensively casual beige suit. The granddaughter. She seemed startled to see him but spoke his name.

“Mr. Spear?”

“Yes. Ms. Kessler.”

“That’s right. You look surprised to see me.”

“I was going to say the same thing.”

She laughed, a short, uninhibited burst of sound.

“Come in.” He stepped into the cramped entry and stood very close to her while she continued to speak. “Preconceptions are funny. Who were you expecting?”

“I don’t know, a maid, I guess.”

“No maid.”

A dark, wood-paneled library stood immediately to the right of the entry, but the rest of the place was remarkably light. He followed her down a narrow corridor of warm wood and white paint. Framed prints covered the walls, maps of medieval cities; the dead man’s taste, no doubt. She hadn’t yet put her own touches on the place, he noted, then realized he didn’t have a clue what her own tastes might be. As Robin would have told him, he was trying to construct a personality without yet knowing the person. It was a bad habit of his.

“The cook is deaf, and he’s not here now. I let the nurse go after my grandfather died, so it’s just me. Would you like coffee?”

The kitchen was bright, the windows admitting as much light as the massive plane tree in the courtyard would allow. Matthew hesitated. This was his first solo house call, and he wasn’t certain of protocol.

“Only if you’re having some.”

“Any excuse for a cup of coffee. Please sit down.”

Into two blue china mugs she poured stale coffee-he could smell it-from a cheap plastic coffeemaker on the counter.

“Milk, sugar?”

“Black is fine.”

“I’m glad you said that, because there is no milk and I don’t know where the sugar is.”

He took a sip and set the mug aside. No one in his family would serve coffee like that to his worst enemy. What was it with rich people and food?

“So who were you expecting,” he asked.

“Oh, I don’t know.”

“ Tweed jacket? Gray hair and spectacles?”

“That’s right. Maybe a pipe.”

“Not on the job. Don’t want to get smoke on those delicate surfaces.”

“Of course. I was really just expecting someone older.”

“I’m working on it, every day.”

She laughed again, and he realized that he was going to have to resist the impulse to keep making her do that.

“Have you been with the museum long?”

“Three years. Not long. You can be there ten years and still be the new guy.”

“But you’re a curator?”

“Assistant curator.”

“That’s impressive for someone as young as you, isn’t it?”

He understood now. This wasn’t small talk, he was being interviewed. Was he equal to the job of assessing her grandfather’s work?

“Not really. They needed someone who knew Eastern Orthodox art, and that’s been my primary focus. I was at the Byzantine Museum in Athens for two years before this.”

“Interesting.” She seemed to tire quickly of her own questioning. “This coffee is terrible, I’ll make some fresh.”

“I’ve had plenty this morning.”

“You want to get to work and I’m dragging my feet.”

“There’s no rush.” He had to be careful. “It’s not an easy matter, exposing work that has a strong emotional connection to a complete stranger. It’s one thing to contemplate parting with it, another to watch some so-called expert sizing it up, reducing it to a piece of commerce.”

“Is that what you do, Mr. Spear?”

“I hope not. I was trying to see it from your side.”

“You’re very understanding. You must do this a lot.”

“No, actually.”

“The thing is, the icon is downstairs in this sort of chapel my grandfather built. It’s a very private place. No one went in there but him.”

“I see. Well, we, or you, could take it out of there and I could examine it up here. The light would probably be better, anyway.”

“Sorry, I hadn’t even thought about the light. I can’t imagine seeing it any kind of way but the way it is now, in that strange room. I guess that’s why I haven’t moved it.”

“Now you’ve made me curious.”

“I’m making too much of it. It’s just a little chapel, an old man’s indulgence. I mean, who builds a chapel in their home anymore?”

“Your grandfather was obviously a medievalist at heart.”

“Yes, he was.”

“May I see it?”

She looked at him blankly for a moment. She was tired, sleep-deprived probably, fully formed thoughts coming slowly to her upper consciousness.

“The chapel? Absolutely, I want you to. Then we can take the icon someplace with better lighting, so you can examine it properly.”

“Great.”

“OK.” She stood up, paused again. “I guess what I’m trying to explain is that this wasn’t a valuable artwork to my grandfather. It was a sacred object, to be worshiped.”

Matthew felt a tingling in the back of his skull, and an impulse, contrary to his nature, to reveal something of himself.

“That was its original purpose,” he said quietly. “That’s why it was created.”

They were the right words. She seemed calmed, though she continued to stand there.

“It’s odd. He was raised Catholic, but he preferred Orthodox art. It’s as if his aesthetic tastes led him into a different kind of religious belief. Which might make you doubt his sincerity, except I think all art, even secular art, was spiritual to him.”

He smiled, aware that no response was necessary.

“I hope,” she said hesitantly, “that religious talk isn’t offensive to you.”

“Not at all. My family is Greek, religion is in the blood.”

“I should have known that. My lawyer knows your godfather, or something?”

“That’s right.”

“Then Spear is…?”

“Spyridis. My grandfather still hasn’t forgiven my father for that.”

“Right.” She sat again, yet he sensed forward progress. “So you’re Greek Orthodox?”

“Yes, I mean, so far as I’m anything. My father isn’t religious, and I had only limited exposure to religion growing up.”

“And your mother?”

“She’s a believer, mostly, she and my godfather. Worry beads and calendars of the saints and all that. They took us to church at Easter, made sure we knew what it was about.”

“‘Us’ is…?”

“Me and my sister.”

“Is your sister religious?”

Where the hell was she going with this?

“No. She has my father’s scientific mind.”

“And are you of the scientific or spiritual mind-set, Mr. Spear?”

“I try to blend the two. My training is scientific, but there’s no real understanding of this kind of work without comprehending the religious purpose.”

“What a careful answer.”

“I write them down on my sleeve for quick reference.”

“In case you get grilled by some rude creature like me,” she laughed. “I’m sorry, I’m just trying to get to know you better. And I guess I’m stalling.”

“If you’re not comfortable doing this now, we can make another appointment. I confess I’d be disappointed, but-”

“No, it’s fine. You are being incredibly patient.”

“Please call me Matthew, by the way.”

“Matthew. Good. I usually answer to Chris.”

“Usually, huh?”

“Usually.”

“Is that what I should call you?”

He could take her long stare so many ways that he decided to ignore it. She carried both mugs to the sink and stood for awhile with her back to him.

“No, I guess not. Call me Ana.”

“Ana. All right.”

“Follow me, Matthew.”

The chamber was not large, maybe twenty feet deep by twelve wide, the darkness within accentuated by the brightness elsewhere in the house. The only illumination came from scattered streaks of blue, red, and yellow light from six small stained-glass windows. Matthew could make out a bench, candelabra, square panels on the walls. Details were visible on several of the near panels, figures in a crowd scene, a leaning cross against a gray-blue sky. Of the larger panel, directly opposite the arched entry, he could make out no details until his companion turned a dial in the room behind, and the Holy Mother of Katarini slowly emerged from darkness.

The icon, about twenty-four by thirty inches, was badly chipped and at first glance appeared nearly abstract: a luminous gold field with a maroon wedge emerging from the bottom and covering most of the panel. The wedge soon revealed itself as a robe wrapped about the torso and head of a woman. Her forearms were raised before her chest, her long hands raised in prayerful supplication. The shape of her hood could be made out clearly, but the details of her face were murky. Except for the eyes. The eyes drew you in, and Matthew realized that he had walked more than halfway across the chamber without any awareness of moving. Not even the photograph had prepared him for these eyes floating within that cowl. Large, dark brown almost to black, and almond-shaped, in the favored Eastern style. Penetrating, all-knowing, forgiving, or rather ready to forgive, but requiring something of you first. Matthew held the gaze as long as he could and then had to look away.

“Are you OK?” She spoke softly behind him.

“Yes.”

“They get to you, don’t they? The eyes. I can never look at them for long.”

“They’re very expressive.”

“A little frightening, I think. Beautiful, but judgmental. The way religion feels when you’re young.”

“I suppose religion was a much more primal experience when this was painted.”

“I think of all those Renaissance masterpieces.” She was beside him now, speaking quietly, almost into his ear. “Aesthetically, they’re flawless. Mary is always serene. Yet there’s something so much more powerful, or vital, about this. She looks menacing. Godly. Not that Mary is a god, technically.”

“To the Greeks she is.”

“I’m sorry, I’m babbling. I’d blame the coffee, but the truth is I get nervous standing here.”

“Guilty conscience?”

“Could be. I just find the work very unsettling. My grandfather could sit in front of it for hours, I don’t know how.” He felt her breath on his neck as she exhaled deeply, calming herself. “He died in here, actually.”

“Really.”

“Simultaneous heart attack and stroke. Diana, his nurse, found him just exactly where you’re standing.”

He resisted the impulse to move.

“No wonder it bothers you.”

“So is it good work, Matthew?” she asked.

“It’s a shame about the damage, though it only seems to add to the mystique. I’d say it’s excellent work, and very old. Possibly pre-iconoclastic, which would make it quite rare. I’ll know better when I look at it more closely.”

“I guess we should take it off the wall.”

“I’ll do it, if you like. I’m experienced at handling these things.”

She pulled her hair back with both hands and nodded.

“It probably violates the insurance policy, but I would prefer that. We just need to turn off the alarm.”

“How do we do that?”

“I’m not exactly sure. Come help me figure it out.”

Andreas had left a message for Morrison in Washington the night before, and the agency man had called him back at the hotel the next morning.

“What brings you to the States, my friend?”

“My son is ill.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

No doubt he was, but the tone of voice made it clear that he had more pressing business than chatting with a retired Greek operative. Andreas could picture the man, trim, regulation hair and that shifting, nervous gaze, determined to miss nothing while missing everything. Impatience. That was the reason, despite all its resources, that American intelligence was always getting things wrong. They were good at reading satellite photos, but not at reading faces. They could not gauge the mood of a people, or even a single man.

“I have a request,” Andreas continued. “It is a rather delicate matter.”

“I’m sure this line is secure.”

“I would prefer to meet. I believe you are here in New York?”

“Why do you say that?’

“A guess.” One had to become good at guessing when one had no resources. “You often come here. Besides, there are no secure lines in Washington.”

Morrison laughed. “Probably true. OK, but it has to be brief, and it has to be soon. Like right now, this morning.”

“That suits me well.”

Morrison chose a generic coffee shop near Herald Square, the kind of place he always preferred. The man had an encyclopedic knowledge of every faceless, tasteless eatery in every northeastern American city. Morrison’s predecessor, Bill Barber, had taken Andreas to wonderful restaurants where they ate, drank, told stories, and traded information almost incidentally, as if none of it were about business. But Barber hadn’t been much for protocol, and Andreas had been useful then.

He arrived early and chose a booth in back, too near the hot, musty stink of the deep-fryer. Morrison arrived a few minutes later in his trademark blue suit and gray raincoat, the uniform, though today it was appropriate to the weather-windy, and threatening rain.

“You look well.”

“I look terrible, and so do you,” Andreas shot back, as much to unsettle the man as to state the truth. It had been years since they had last met, and the years had not been kind to Morrison. He had gotten heavy; gone gray at the temples; and his gaze no longer darted so much but had a set, glazed cast about it. Perhaps there had been some unpleasant fieldwork. Perhaps family. Andreas could empathize, but the other man was certain not to speak of whatever it was.

“I’m OK, not enough sleep is all. I am sorry about your boy. Alex, right?”

“You went to the trouble of checking my file. I am honored.”

“Jesus, Andy, I happened to remember. You always insult people you need favors from?”

“Yes, it’s a Greek custom. We hate to be in anyone’s debt, so we offend them right at the start to let them know they do not own us.”

Morrison shook his head, appeased or amused.

“Is that true?”

“No. I am an uncivilized old man, my apologies. Yes, Alex.”

“What’s wrong with him?”

“A blood disorder. You would know the name if I could remember it. Such illnesses are rare in my family, but for one so young…I do not understand.”

“There’s no understanding these things. God works in mysterious ways, the shit.”

Andreas decided that he liked this older, crankier version of Morrison better than the insolently confident fellow he’d known before. A weary, bleached-blond waitress took silent but visible offense at their order of coffee, and the agency man felt compelled to add eggs and toast.

“Haven’t had breakfast.”

“You should always eat breakfast, Robert.”

“I know, my wife tells me every day.”

“Personally, I would not eat breakfast here, but I am very careful about food.”

“I wasn’t actually planning on it.”

“She intimidated you. She is Peloponnesian, that one, fierce. The cook also, not a very clean-looking fellow. And the Mexican dishwasher has a cold. No, I would not eat here.”

“I’ll have an orange juice to kill the germs.”

“Orange juice. Have garlic.”

“In my eggs?”

“Better than in your coffee. I’m looking for a man.”

“Official business?”

“I have no official business any longer. This is, as you say, a favor. I want to know if this man entered the country in the last two weeks. Probably somewhere in the New York region, though possibly farther away. I can give you all of his known aliases.”

“That’s too wide a net. Point of origin?”

“ South America. Argentina, but it’s likely he would pass through another country first.”

“So he knows what he’s doing.”

“Yes, but I believe he may have lowered his guard in this instance. He will not expect to be tracked, and he will be in a hurry.”

“Physical description?”

“Medium height, blue eyes. Older, in his eighties.”

“This guy wouldn’t be German by any chance? Dead for about thirty years?”

Andreas leaned back against the creaking imitation leather, disappointed by this development. He had counted on Morrison’s relative youth to keep him in the dark.

“We never spoke of this before.”

“Come on, Andy,” laughed the government man, “it was your obsession. It’s all in your file. But the guy is supposed to be dead.”

“They showed me a grave. A wooden cross and some turned earth behind the last house he owned. I never saw a body.”

“This was Argentinean intelligence?”

“The grave was fresh. No more than a day or two old. They could have dug it an hour before I came up the hill.”

“People do just die, my friend. A lot of those old Nazis managed to die a natural death.”

“It was too convenient. They were protecting him. They still are, I’m sure. Maybe you are, too.”

“Me?” Morrison smiled innocently.

“The fine organization you work for. It’s interesting that my hunt for Müller is so detailed in my file, when I could get no help from you people at the time.”

“Resources were thin. He was small-time, a major or a colonel, I think. Not even a general, let alone some architect of the Reich. You needed the Israelis.”

“He was small-time for them, also. They did give me a few leads in the end. That was how I found the house.”

“But the Argentineans intercepted you.”

“As soon as I stepped off the bus in a nearby village. They knew exactly who I was. They were polite, said that there had been a development which would please me. Took me up the hill to the house. Showed me the grave.”

“It does sound awfully tidy.”

“Will you help me, Robert?”

Morrison stuck a fork into the hefty pile of eggs just placed before him. Then paused, looking perplexed, or perhaps nauseated.

“It’s sticky.”

“Send it back.”

“The situation is sticky. If there was some reason we didn’t help you back then, I don’t know what it was, and I don’t feel like blundering into it now.”

“All these years later, what can it matter? Indulge an old man.”

“There’s no upside to this. If he’s dead, I’ve wasted my time. If he’s alive, and I put you on to him, things could get ugly. I can’t have you terminating this guy on American soil.”

“Who said anything about that?”

“Isn’t that what you were aiming for back then? Why else do you want to find him?”

“I have questions. More important, I must keep an eye on him to protect others.”

“You think he means to try something? I’ve got to know about that if you do.”

“I have no idea what he intends. Understand, Robert,” and Andreas leaned across the chipped Formica, fixing the other man in his unblinking gaze, “all you can tell me is that he entered the country. I will still have to find him, which will likely prove impossible, but at least I will be on my guard. You will be protecting me with this information. Do you see?”

“I see that you’re a smooth-talking old bastard.”

“Have me watched.”

“Can’t afford that.”

Andreas reached into his coat and removed a slip of paper, which he placed on the table. Morrison studied it a moment, chewing his toast.

“The aliases?”

“As many as I know of.”

“He could have come up with twenty more in the last thirty years.”

“True. But without someone hunting him, I doubt he would bother. It’s troublesome work, creating identities. Anyway, at least one of these was used within the last ten years, in eastern Europe. I’ve marked it. Of course, it may not have been him.”

This was becoming too much information for the agency man, who had come to the great metropolis with other priorities and now shifted restlessly in his seat. Andreas was content. It was best that the tired bureaucrat remember as little of this conversation as possible.

“If I pick this up,” said Morrison, nodding at the paper, “it doesn’t mean I’m committing to anything. I may do the search and still decide to do nothing. You might not hear from me.”

“I understand.”

The younger man sighed and slipped his wallet from his suit jacket, sliding out a twenty as he slid the white scrap of paper in.

“Unless this guy is on a watch list, it’s very unlikely I’ll find him. Don’t call me about this. I’ll call your hotel if I have anything to report.”

“You never let me pay.”

“It’s my country. You can buy me dinner in Athens.”

“You always say that, but you never come.”

“One of these days.”

5

Fotis was on his usual bench, turned three-quarters from the sun, gray overcoat and fedora, white mustache like a beacon. Bright pink patches stood out on his prominent cheekbones, and he stared distractedly into space while feeding bits of soft pretzel to a flock of pigeons at his feet. Fotis occupied such a powerful place in his imagination that Matthew was constantly surprised to see what an old and delicate-looking man his godfather had become. And why not? He was pushing ninety. Yet there was more than age at work, some deeper change was under way that came clear only from weekly contact. Fotis was ill. The old charmer-or schemer, as Alekos always called him-would never let on, but he was not well, and his illness was bound to add a sense of urgency to all his latest efforts. Matthew sat.

“Kaliméra, Theio.”

Fotis turned slowly and smiled at him.

“It is a good morning. I can feel the sun. I think we have survived another winter.”

“Winter was over weeks ago.”

“You can never be certain. March is the worst month. It tempts you with warmth and flowers, then buries you in snow. April is better; I think we are safe now. How is your father?”

“Improved. They may send him home.”

“Excellent. And how was it between him and your grandfather?”

“Not bad. A little tense. They sent me out of the room at one point, so I don’t know everything that happened, but they seemed to be communicating when I got back.”

Fotis shook his head. “Poor man.”

“How are you?”

“The same, always the same.” He patted his godson’s knee. “That is my secret. Let us walk.”

They went north, the sun at their backs. The wide path through the zoo grounds was full of shrieking children, and Matthew gripped his godfather’s arm protectively. Fotis smiled benevolently at the zigzagging horde, taking an old man’s delight in their youthful energy, even when a small boy collided with him. They watched the seals on their rock island, and caught a glimpse of the polar bear doing lazy laps in his pool.

“Has the deal gone through on the house?” Matthew asked. Fotis had described a place in Armonk he was going to buy, and on a lark Matthew and Robin, who had grown up there, drove around the town until they found it. Just a few weeks back, days before she ended things.

“The house.” Fotis seemed surprised. “I did not remember mentioning the house to you. No, I have decided not to purchase it after all. Too great an indulgence.”

This was curious. His godfather had seemed extremely excited about the house when they last discussed it, and Matthew had the impression the deal was virtually done. Another of the old man’s little mysteries. Meanwhile, he realized it was up to him to raise the subject that was on both their minds.

“I saw the Kessler icon yesterday.”

“Tell me.”

“It’s wonderful. I mean, it’s suffered a lot of wear, but there is something very powerful about it. Very moving.”

“So, you would say its value is more spiritual than artistic?”

“Not necessarily. I mean, value to whom?”

“Precisely.” The older man paused before taking on a long, sloping incline in the path. “Will you recommend purchasing the work to your superiors?”

“My department chief needs to see it, probably the director. The decision will get made at a higher level.”

“Come now, you have no influence at all?”

“I am the Byzantine specialist, I’m sure they’ll give me a voice. For its age alone we should buy it, and it’s also a great work of art. It could be the crown jewel of the new galleries.”

“Certainly.”

“But there are so many agendas. The museum can’t buy everything it should.”

“You would like for them to acquire it.”

“Speaking selfishly, I’d like to have it around, to be able to study it whenever I wanted. We don’t have a lot of icons, none like this one.”

“There are none like it, I would guess. But will it go on a wall for all to see, or will it sit in a case in your wonderful temperature-controlled basement, for only scholars’ eyes?”

“That’s a concern, I confess.”

“I sensed as much. You’re a very conscientious boy. Now,” he took Matthew’s arm and began walking again, “tell me about the icon itself.”

Matthew described the work while they proceeded, past a lush slope of yellow daffodils and white narcissi, through a small field of fruit trees, fat with just-splitting buds. He attempted to keep his language technical, yet feared that too much of his emotional response to the image showed through. It seemed impossible to use the academic voice, to keep that professional distance when speaking or even thinking of this particular piece, and he had yet to address with himself what that might mean. The older man listened quietly, his face neutral, until they paused at the Seventy-second Street crosswalk.

“Marvelous. I would very much like to see it again one day.”

“I’m sure that can be arranged, wherever it ends up.”

Fotis looked at him with damp eyes, which may just have been from the wind.

“I knew you were the right one to look at that icon.”

“I should thank you for putting in a word with their lawyer. It was a nice coincidence that you knew him.”

“We are in the same club, but it’s nonsense to thank me. The museum would have sent you in any case.”

“Maybe the family wouldn’t have thought of the museum if you hadn’t mentioned it. Whatever happens now, I’ve been able to see it, so I’m satisfied.”

“I am told that you made a very favorable impression upon Ms. Kessler.”

“The lawyer told you that?”

“Why should it be a secret? In fact, she may want you to come back and do a second examination. For herself this time.”

Matthew shrugged uncomfortably.

“That really wouldn’t be kosher while the museum is considering.”

They crossed the road and started down the steep, looping path to the boat pond.

“Unless I am mistaken, it is she and not the museum who will decide the work’s fate.”

“Of course.”

“And she will need help with that decision. She trusts you already.”

“It’s awkward.”

“You are assuming that you will be placed in a position contrary to your conscience. There is another way to look at the matter. Ms. Kessler may need to be told what to do.”

“I don’t know that I understand you.”

“You do not, yet.”

They said no more before they reached the bottom of the path. Fotis gripped his arm more tightly, and Matthew realized that his godfather had a pained look on his face, physical pain, possibly quite acute. The jaw clenched and the eyes closed, and Fotis swayed a moment, breathing deeply through his nose.

“Theio, are you OK?”

Equanimity returned to the old man’s face after several moments.

“The air is lovely today, is it not, my boy?”

“Do you want to sit?”

“A few minutes, perhaps.”

They shuffled to a bench set back from the water’s edge, a little past where the hawk watchers huddled about their telescopes. Fotis sat heavily. Concerned as he was, Matthew said nothing more. This was not the first time he’d seen these symptoms, and questions would only make the old man retreat. His pain was his own, as jealously guarded as his other secrets. The pond’s surface was a dark glass, reflecting a shadowland version of the brick boathouse across the way. Behind that, tall trees, just touched with lime green, soared up well past the level of the street behind them, and above the trees the square stone towers of Fifth Avenue were bathed in yellow-white light.

“Can I get you anything?” Matthew asked, but Fotis waved him off.

“Fate is a peculiar thing. We believe that we command our own lives, but events will occur, again and again, which lead us in a certain direction. Do you not find this to be true? We can resist. We can go along, pretending we are still in control. Or, we can try to determine what fate wants of us, and help to make it happen.”

“I’m not much of a believer in fate.”

“That is because you are young. One must believe in one’s own power at your age. In another time, however, the young sought advice from the old. The old were understood to hold wisdom from experience. This is no longer the way.”

Matthew took the hint and shut up.

“You have said some interesting things today,” Fotis went on. “It is possible that your unconscious already perceives a dilemma which your conscious mind has not grasped, because a choice has not yet been put before you. So. I was contacted a few days ago by a highly placed official of the Greek church. Regarding the icon. They are very much determined to acquire the work, and they want help from me in the matter.”

A rush of anxiety coursed through the younger man. He sat forward on the bench, both disbelieving and struck by a strange sense that he had expected something very like this.

“Why would the church contact you? How do they even know about the icon?”

“The church has many resources, and I have many friends within the church. They place a high value upon recovering stolen art treasures, especially those of great religious significance and power. Kessler’s ownership of the icon was not a secret.”

“You only conjecture that it’s stolen.”

“No,” the old man countered instantly, then seemed to restrain himself. “You must have seen documents from the lawyer. What do they say of its provenance?”

“It’s more or less in line with the work you and I have discussed.”

“The Holy Mother of Katarini.”

“They don’t use that name, but it’s an obvious match. Preiconoclastic, original source unknown. The last few centuries in a church in Epiros.”

“And how did it come to be in Kessler’s possession?”

“He claimed to have purchased it from a fellow Swiss businessman.”

“So that fellow is the thief. Or the one before him. What does it matter? Somewhere along the line it was stolen. What Greek would have willingly parted with it?”

“Maybe one who needed money after the war.”

“It was taken during the war, I tell you. The Germans took it with them when they left.”

Now we’ve arrived at it, Matthew thought. His godfather had been hinting about something for weeks.

“How do you know that?”

Fotis sighed, smoothing his hands out across his gray pleated pants.

“Very well. Very well, I told you I had seen the work before.”

“Yes. That’s how we got talking about it in the first place.”

“I didn’t tell you everything. It was during the war that I saw it, in that church in your grandfather’s village. It was your Papou, in fact, who arranged for me to see it. I have never forgotten that time. Less than an hour, but I was completely possessed by its beauty, by the power emanating from within it. You know I was with the guerrillas. I was in charge of the resistance in that area, and I sent a man to get the icon from that church. Before the Germans took it, or burned the place without knowing what it was. They burned so many villages, churches and all.”

The old man paused, lost in a vision of houses aflame. Matthew watched the men who watched the birds. He sensed that this story would end up troubling him, and not just because the museum would never touch stolen work. The information, which he was hungry to learn, would come at the price of his neutrality. Every word got him deeper into whatever it was his godfather had planned. Yet how could he resist? These old guys gave up their secrets so infrequently.

“What happened?”

“Yes, what. I’m still not sure. The man I sent was my best man. To Fithee we called him. We all went by different names, so the Germans could not get information about our brothers, or our families. It must sound foolish to you now.”

“To Fithee. The serpent.”

“The Snake, if you like. Because he was so good at slipping into and out of places. And for other reasons. He had his own ideas of how best to do things, but I trusted him.”

“And he failed.”

“No, he succeeded. Too well. He understood the icon’s value even better than I did, and he decided to take it at all costs.” Fotis wet his lips with his tongue. “He killed a priest.”

Matthew sat back on the bench. This was uglier than he would have guessed.

“Why?”

“I speak too quickly. I do not know for certain that he did it. The priest intervened somehow, and he died.”

“What happened to the icon?”

“The church was burned, by the Germans, I think, though he might have done that also. At the time, I assumed the icon burned with it. Later I learned that my man had given it to a German officer.”

“Given it?”

“Traded it, for guns and ammunition. To fight the communists. Once we knew the Germans were beaten, that became the priority. So you see, he was not being a thief, but a patriot. For all I know, he was under orders from someone above me.”

Matthew tapped his feet to drive out the chill, as well as quell his agitation. The icon was suddenly marred, as if blood had been flicked across its surface. He would not be able to see it in the same way. Fotis seemed to read his thoughts.

“Many have killed for this work, and others like it, over the years. It should not surprise you, my boy. Or are you shocked to find blood on your godfather’s hands?”

“You didn’t send him to kill the priest.”

“No. But I commanded him, controlled him, I thought. He had his own game; everyone did. It’s a sad story. I am sorry to upset you. You would like to see the work in a purely artistic way, but since you are a kind of historian, I thought you should know.”

“This wasn’t a history lesson. You were talking about the Greek church, remember?”

“Indeed. My only point was this. We’ve discussed the minor importance the work would have to your museum. You know, or you should know, the value the icon had, not only as a source of faith, but as a source of healing, in the old country. This would seem to me sufficient reason to return it there. If not, well, then you have my sorry tale of its theft, and at what cost in blood. Can there be any doubt after that as to what the correct course should be?”

“So you want me to tell Ms. Kessler to donate the work to the Greek church?”

Fotis’ eyes widened. “I see, you are afraid of defrauding her. No, the church is quite willing to pay. Of course, they might win the work in a lawsuit, but proving the theft and tracing the crooked path of ownership could take years, and cost as much in lawyers as it would take to buy the piece in the first place. They will make her an offer, perhaps not as much as she wants, but a fair offer, I have no doubt. And she is rich, so I would not be overly concerned about that.”

“But you want me to talk her into it.”

“To advise her, let her know your own heart on the matter. The rest will follow.”

Matthew rose slowly, resisting the urge to swear, kick the bench, simply walk away. Instead he just stood there beside the shrunken old man.

“What are you up to?”

“What have I to do with it, my child? The situation is what it is. Fate chooses her own weapons.”

Weapons, not tools, Matthew mused. He tried to think of himself as a weapon of fate. What a joke.

“Fate didn’t bring me into this. You did.”

“Am I not also an instrument? You were meant to be involved.”

“That’s a simple formula for justifying any damn thing you like, isn’t it? That must make life very easy.”

In fact, Fotis’ life had been anything but easy, and Matthew did not hope to either understand or undermine his philosophy. Yet his godfather seemed unperturbed, serene; infuriatingly so.

“It is called faith, and it is available to anyone. You need not be your father’s son.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Nothing, my boy. It was a foolish thing to say. I apologize.”

They had both misspoken, and silence followed. Matthew walked the pond’s edge. The water was clear, springtime-fresh, with no dead leaves or debris. He could see the worn concrete shelf, then the bottom. This was Matthew’s backyard, this whole section of park south of the museum to Seventy-second Street, the place he came to walk off stress, absorb a loss, get his head together. This was the very spot he would have chosen to contemplate the troubling revelation now before him. Yet here he was, and there was no comfort. He watched the still water and the vibrant spring light, smelled the damp earth, without emotion, without any reaction at all. An invisible screen seemed to have gone up between himself and the world. He would like to blame it on the conversation with Fotis, but that wasn’t right. Had the feeling not been with him for the last two days, only now crystallizing? Could he not place it almost to the moment he stood before the icon, the dark eyes holding him, Ana Kessler’s words, her breath, in his ear? And since then work, conversation, the necessary chores of life hummed like one long, dull interruption until he could think about the icon again, talk about it, see it. He wandered back to Fotis. The older man seemed far away in thought until Matthew began to sit.

“No, time to walk again. I have kept you too long. Help me up.”

They continued north along the narrow path to the bridge below Cedar Hill, at ease once more in their manner, if not their minds. Matthew waited for a continued assault, but his companion was quiet, attention directed inward. Suppressing new pain, perhaps, or focusing his energy to finish the walk. Bright strips on the ceiling lit the short tunnel. A heap of clothing against the wall became, on closer inspection, a homeless man, sleeping or expired.

“If the church were to get it,” Matthew began in mid-thought,

“where would they put it?”

“We have not spoken in that sort of detail. I cannot ask them such things unless I am ready to support them if the answer is agreeable. And I cannot support them at all without you. So tell me what answer would make you happy.”

“I’d just want to be sure it wasn’t going to end up in a vault, or on some bishop’s wall. That it would be somewhere the public could see it.”

“Then we make that a condition of our involvement.”

“I don’t see how we can set conditions. I don’t intend to talk Ms. Kessler into anything.”

“But if she asks your advice, you will give it?”

“I have to think about all this.”

“That is the wise course.”

Dogs frolicked with their masters on the wide, sloping hillside above. To the north, through trees and across the Seventy-ninth Street transverse rose the massive concrete and glass south wall of the museum. A path bisected the one they were on, running up Cedar Hill to their left and out to Fifth Avenue on their right. Fotis would take this path to where his driver-one of the Russians, Anton or Nicholas-waited on the avenue. Obeying some unspoken rule, Matthew never accompanied him to the car, but did watch to see that he made it safely to the street.

“I will leave you to your work.” Fotis took both of the younger man’s hands in his own. “Do not let your thoughts be troubled. The correct decision will come to you if your mind is at peace. God keep you, my boy.”

“Take care, Theio.”

A squeeze of fingers and the old man was off, slow but steady in his gait, never looking back. Matthew stood fixed in that little intersection until long after his godfather was out sight.

Jan placed the guidebook, open to the section on Central Park, facedown on the bench and waited for the old man to pass by. The younger one still stood there, fifty meters away, looking in his direction. Unlikely that he had noticed anything, Jan decided, merely making sure the old fellow was all right. He reached into his pocket and put his hand around the cool metal object, slipped it out carefully. One shot would do it, but two or three were protocol, in the back of the skull and between and just below the shoulder blades. That is, if this were a gun and not a cell phone.

Of course this was a terrible spot, far too many people and no cover. One of the three short tunnels they had passed through would be a better choice, especially if it were a rainy or cloudy day, a good bet in April in New York. But he might have to take out the younger one as well. Better still would be between the car and the house out in Queens. Well, best to have several options. He could inform del Carros that it would be no problem. The dealer would assume he was being nonchalant, having already pronounced the Greek a difficult target, but in truth Jan anticipated little trouble, even with the Russian bodyguards. He wouldn’t mind adding them in; he hated Russians.

No messages. He put the phone away and picked up the guidebook again. Over 300 species of birds seen in the park every year, including the green heron and scarlet tanager. Amazing. Jan shook his head in wonder at the natural world.

6

Dust motes hung in the white shafts of light between the stacks, and Matthew had to work hard not to become hypnotized, not to let his imagination run wild with the strange reports on the pages before him. Down the hall in his office the red message light blinked on his telephone-the idiot lawyer for that potential donor in Chicago, no doubt. Memos from Nevins, the chief curator, from Carol and the planning committee, the director, Legal, all crowded his e-mail inbox, but Matthew was ignoring them. He was holed up instead in the department library, with the old volumes that held the few fragments of available knowledge on the Kessler icon.

An Internet search revealed nothing on so obscure a subject. There was nothing dependable from Byzantine sources, either, no way to trace the icon back to its place and moment of creation. The only clues were to be found in the image itself. The bottom of the work was so damaged that he hadn’t been able to tell for certain whether there might once have been a depiction of the Christ child there, to whom Mary’s badly chipped hands should be directing the viewer. This would place the image squarely in the hodegetria style, “She who shows the way,” one of the most favored and oldest iconic traditions, based on an original painted by Saint Luke himself, according to popular myth. But the placement of the hands and the half turn to the right of the entire figure-more likely to direct the viewer’s attention outside the frame-seemed to place the image more in the hagiasoritissa tradition. This series was associated with the relic of Mary’s hood or sash, brought back from the Holy Land by Saint Helena in the fourth century and placed in a reliquary, above which the prototype of this image would have hung.

There were some arguments against this identification. The Katarini icon looked the viewer dead in the eye, instead of following the hand gestures to the right, where an icon of Jesus would generally accompany it. However, Matthew knew other images in the tradition which also broke that rule. A bigger stumbling block was that the style hadn’t really become popular until the mid-tenth century, and the Katarini icon was certainly older than that, maybe much older. Yet who was to say the style hadn’t existed earlier? Perhaps previous versions had all been destroyed in the iconoclasm of the eighth century. Indeed, Matthew thought, allowing the long-suppressed conjecture which had been building within him all morning to come forward, who was to say this image was not the long-lost prototype itself? The first of its kind, the inspiration for all that followed?

A shiver passed through his arms as the notion seized him. He fought this sudden agitation, assuring himself that the religious significance of such a find meant little to him. It would, though, mean a great deal to others, like the church officials who had contacted Fotis. Even as an art historical identification it would be impressive indeed-career-making, perhaps. Alas, unless further evidence came to light from some hidden source, it would remain forever a theory. Meantime, if he would never know for certain from where the Holy Mother had sprung, or how it made its eventual way to Epiros, at least he could review the traces of evidence regarding its time there.

The catalogs of the great art critics of centuries past had little room for Eastern Orthodox, and when it was included, it was always the same handful of icons: the sixth-century Peter, Mary, and Christ Pantokrator at Saint Catherine’s in Sinai; some later pieces of Theophanes and Rublev in Russia; the Vladimir Virgin; a few others. Considering its placement in the rugged hills of Greece, not to mention the vast number of works in that country claiming special spiritual status, the Katarini Holy Mother’s becoming known at all had to count as nearly miraculous. The first mention Matthew could discover was from the English adventurer Thomas Hall, who traveled all over Greece and Turkey in the 1780s. Hall’s highly fanciful travelogues included, among many unlikely reports, one of the “Holy Mother of Epiros” (as if there were only one Holy Mother icon in the whole region), described as “more scratched wood than paint, except for the very lovely face of the Virgin” and as “curing blindness in true-hearted souls at a touch of its worn wood, but striking blind those of an evil or avaricious nature.” This followed the story of the levitating monks of Metéora and directly preceded that of the miraculous vision of Christ in the peasant wife’s washcloth. Matthew always had a good laugh reading Hall.

Lord Byron, on his first, nonfatal sojourn in Greece in 1809, made mention of a miraculous Holy Mother icon possessed by the Muslim tyrant Ali Pasha, who was already old but vigorous in mind and body, and would remain so until his death at the hands his Turkish overlords in 1822. Again, the description was very close to the Katarini icon, and Byron reported a strange golden aura about the work. Matthew shook his head. If I drank as much as you, Georgie boy, he thought, I’d see auras around paintings too.

The last volume on the table, however, was the one that troubled him most. Johann Mayer-Goff was a traveler of the late nineteenth century and a self-trained specialist on Orthodox art. The German was a sober, stolid, even somewhat boring writer, at least in translation, not given to hyperbole or floating monks. He was the first to name the village of Katarini as the residence of the icon, and he had attended the feast of the Annunciation in that same old church which Fotis’ man burned down sixty years later. The day was rainy, Mayer-Goff wrote, and only candlelight illuminated the dank stone sanctuary:

The icon was brought forth from its place of hiding and positioned near the altar. The peasant women wept in their seats, until they fell into the aisle and approached the Mother of God upon their knees, caressing the wood with their gnarled hands. One among them, who had not walked unaided in many years, stood suddenly upon shaking feet and praised Heaven. At the last, a blind old shepherd with an angry face was led forward by a young man and a girl, who seemed to pull him against his will. When his hand was placed against the forehead of the All-Holy, he cried out once and fixed his eyes upon the nearest candle flame, then upon all of us in the congregation. It was made clear from his movements that he could see us, and with another cry he fell upon the stone floor and wept like child. I saw this with my own eyes.

Matthew began to see dark spots on the page and realized that he had not taken a breath in many moments. Inhaling deeply, he then exhaled an embarrassed laugh. Get a grip on yourself, buddy.

“There you are.”

He looked up to see his older colleague Carol Voss standing before the table, and slapped shut the volume of Mayer-Goff as if he’d been caught by his mother reading Penthouse.

“Here I am, indeed.”

“Not answering your e-mails,” she scolded gently, her green eyes behind large glasses looking him over carefully. Carol was a mentor of sorts, his only close friend at the museum, and there was little he could keep from her.

“It’s not just yours I’m ignoring, if that makes you feel better.”

“This about the Kessler icon?” she waved at the books on the table.

“Yes.”

“Checking provenance?”

“More or less. It’s sketchy.”

“Are we serious about this?” she asked skeptically.

“Are you pretending that I would know that better than you, Ms. Finger-on-the-Director’s-pulse?”

She laughed. “I haven’t a clue. Nevins seems excited.”

“Yeah, but he’s up at the Cloisters every day. I don’t even know if he’s spoken to Fearless Leader.”

“Speak to him yourself.”

“We don’t have that kind of relationship.”

“You seem worried,” she said, out of nowhere. “Are there ownership issues?”

“Maybe,” he conceded, in a barely audible tone.

“Have we filed with the Art Loss Register?”

“Not yet. We need to be a little more certain we want it, right? Besides, if there’s a theft involved, it isn’t going to show up there. It would be older.”

The phrase “wartime loot” hung in the air between them, unspoken. Carol clearly thought of saying more, and Matthew found himself wishing she would, wishing for someone upon whom to unburden himself. She squeezed his shoulder instead.

“Good luck, kiddo. Tell me if you want help. And Matthew, I know this is a fantastic piece and all, but it’s just one piece. It’s not your whole life.”

Calling Benny Ezraki was a long shot. The card with the message service number was years old, and Andreas did not know if Benny was alive, much less still in the business of finding people, but he was unquestionably the right man for the job if he would take it. There was no recorded voice, just a tone. Andreas left his name and the hotel number, and ten minutes later his old Israeli contact called back. Andreas could stop by his new office, if he liked, but he might not approve of it. The old man knew he was being baited but agreed to go there anyway.

The name on the door was for a travel agency, and indeed the posters of Turkey and Egypt on the walls and the efficient young women with their headsets seemed to confer legitimacy. But that was only the first floor. The second, reached by a long stairway, consisted of narrow corridors and closed doors, and the barely dressed, boldly casual women smoking in the small lounge completed the picture. They all smiled at Andreas and pointed to the office in back.

Benny met him with a bear hug, which seamlessly segued into a frisk. Habit, he apologized. The wily Greek Jew still looked younger than his age, which must be late fifties, though he seemed a little beaten down and tired. The beard was graying faster then the hair, the huge shoulders were more hunched, the pouches beneath the gentle brown eyes were more pronounced. The office had a view of the alley, a large computer monitor on the table, and a Pissarro calendar on the wall. The light was poor, and the cramped space was shrouded in blue cigarette smoke.

“Did you really expect me to be shocked by this place?”

“I was hoping so; you Athenians are all prudes. But I forget you are a man of the world.”

“This is your new business?”

The big man sucked on a cigarette as if his life depended upon it, blew smoke just to the left of Andreas’ face. He seldom smiled, even when he was kidding around.

“Always the same business. Travel, marketing, whores, it’s all about information. I don’t know why I didn’t think of this years ago. You wouldn’t believe the kinds of things these girls find out.”

Andreas, a connoisseur of human nature, found it very easy to believe.

“Are they safe?”

“A doctor checks them every month. You want to try one?”

“That is not what I’m asking.”

“I don’t give them sensitive stuff. Mostly names. Send them around to the hotels whose databases we can’t hack. But they always come back with stories. You know, blackmail is not my thing, but if it were I could make a fortune.”

“You’re too casual for that kind of work; you would get yourself killed.”

“Maybe you’re right.”

“Can we speak freely? Is the Israeli ambassador in the next room?”

“We get very little traffic in here,” Benny replied, the battered ergonomic chair groaning beneath his shifting weight. “Mostly we send out. Like Chinese food. This isn’t a bordello.”

“No?”

“No, we’re an escort service. These aren’t even the prime girls.”

“Not so loud.”

“The prime girls wait at home for the phone to ring. We screen it, make sure it’s safe, get the credit card number, send them out.”

“All in the name of information.”

“That’s my business.”

“Excellent. I’m looking for someone.”

Benny twisted awkwardly to reach the ashtray on his cluttered desk, mashed out one Gauloises, and immediately lit another.

“Aren’t you retired?”

“For years.”

“But never completely, right?”

“I kept my hand in for a while. Until the idiots brought Papandreou back. That was the end.”

“Papandreou, Mitsotakis, not much to choose from there. This new one seems like a decent fellow. Now our Israeli politicians-”

“We’re not discussing politicians, Benny.” Andreas sensed a brush-off in the other man’s tone. “This is unofficial business. A favor. I’m reduced to asking favors these days. You can refuse after you hear what it is, but please let us not talk politics. That’s for old men in cafés.”

“Why would I refuse you?”

“Because there is nothing in it for you. Except my gratitude.”

“And gratitude is such a small thing these days? I think I can judge best what is in my own interests.”

Andreas pursed his lips and nodded. He’d hit the correct spot, but he must not push it.

“Years ago you helped me with something.”

“God defend us, are you chasing Nazis again?”

“The same one.”

“He’s dead.”

“No, he’s here.”

Benny looked at him hard. “You are certain?”

“Yes.”

This was risky. He had only Fotis’ word about Müller, which he would never normally trust uncorroborated. Yet his instinct told him it must be so, had been telling him since before he left Greece. If he was wrong, it was a cruel trick. Benny’s parents had been taken in the Salonika deportation in 1943 and died at Auschwitz. Müller may or may not have been involved, but he was a German officer in Salonika at the time, and that had been good enough for Benny thirty years before. He had been the one Mossad analyst to throw Andreas some leads, and the two had played straight with each other since then. They were both, by nature, careful about facts, and Andreas did not say he was certain of a thing unless he was.

“But you don’t know exactly where he is.”

“That’s what I need you to tell me.”

“Then how do you know he’s here?”

“I have been informed.”

“A dependable source, I hope.”

“I’ll pay you. So you’re not wasting your time.”

“Been hoarding your drachmas? Well, when a Greek agrees to pay, he must be pretty certain. But then it’s not a favor.”

“We can dispense with favors. Or you can refuse me, but don’t toy with an old man.”

Benny put up his hands in surrender, leaned over to get another cigarette, then realized he hadn’t finished the one in the ashtray. He was more agitated than he would let on.

“Müller. You know how much trouble you got me into over that business?”

“How could I not, after all the times you told me? But you work for yourself now.”

“Which means I have fewer resources than I used to.”

“But better technology.”

“This,” Benny waved at the monitor, “this won’t help us with Müller. I don’t see him making it easy on us, staying at a big hotel.”

“Why not? No one has looked for him in years. A private citizen, traveling under an alias, where better to hide but in a crowded hotel?”

The other man considered this. “You may be right. In my experience, however, people’s behavior doesn’t change. They may vary a pattern, but the pattern is discernible. Those old Nazis don’t stay at hotels.”

“Where do they stay?”

“Private homes, if they have those connections. In which case we’ll never find him. I haven’t looked for one of these guys for a while, and never in this country, but there used to be two small inns, run by elderly German ladies, very discreet. One in Brooklyn, which may be gone now; and one in the Village. That’s where I would start.”

“And will you?”

“I have some conditions.”

Andreas sighed. He would rather have paid a king’s ransom than have someone else set conditions, but Benny was a peer and couldn’t be treated like some low-clearance freelancer.

“Yes?”

“What are your intentions when you find him?”

“That is a question, not a condition.”

“One flows from the other. I need to know.” Benny sized him up unblinkingly, while Andreas took longer to form a response than was wise. “My friend,” the younger man pressed, leaning forward in his chair, “do you even know what your intentions are?”

“I have questions for him, if he can be made to answer them. It is also important that I monitor his actions.”

“You once had bolder plans than that.”

“I was younger. He is not responsible for your parents, Benny, he was only there to steal. That is all he has ever been about.”

“That may be true, but it doesn’t forgive his actions. I’ve seen his signature on arrest orders. He participated. Then there’s your story, that would be reason enough.”

“Reason for what? Tell me your damn conditions.”

From the window came the faraway wail of sirens. In a room close by a woman laughed. Andreas felt pinned to his chair by age and fatigue.

“I don’t want your money, first off. We do this together, or I don’t involve myself. I find him, we pay him a visit. He’s bound to be more responsive to your questions with me there.”

“And then?”

Benny shrugged.

“Assuming the circumstances allow it, we get rid if him.”

7

I made fresh coffee this time.”

She was used to conveying calm self-assurance, Matthew could tell, but her fidgeting about the counters bespoke nervousness. Was he the cause? Why should he be? More likely the messy details of her grandfather’s estate, which he had taken another afternoon away from his busy office to help her confront. He’d walked along the reservoir, barely aware of the brisk wind, the waning gold light on the water, the joggers’ dirty looks as they darted around him on the narrow path. His senses blunted by images in his mind: a blind shepherd suddenly beholding a candle’s flame; black-shrouded widows on callused, broken knees, baring their grief to the Mother, walking away cleansed; a dark chamber full of weary, resigned supplicants made one, made whole, if only for a little while, by a touch, a glance. Faces like his grandfather’s, his aunts’ and cousins’, faces like his own. Mayer-Goff’s words echoed in his skull: I saw this with my own eyes. He barely remembered to leave the park at Ninetieth Street, good shoes muddied by the horse trail, his pace and heartbeat quickening in a disquieting fashion the moment the Kessler brownstone came into view.

“Thanks,” he said, “that wasn’t necessary.”

“It’s not Greek coffee, of course. I’m not sure how to make that.”

“You need the right grounds, like espresso. Better just to go someplace where they make it well.”

“And do you know the right place?”

Ana carried two mugs to the table and sat across from him. Her face still appeared drawn, yet there was something strong in her, beneath the weariness. She wore it well.

“I know a few.”

He was so certain that she would ask where those places were, ask him if he would take her to them sometime, that he was faintly embarrassed when she did not.

“Thanks for coming by,” she said, staring into her coffee, her tone businesslike. “I know I only lured you with the chance to see the icon again, but the price you have to pay is talking some things through with me. Informally. I understand your allegiance is to the Met.”

“I’d be happy to be of use.”

“Can you tell me how serious the museum is?”

“We’re interested, no question. I’m not sure yet how deep the interest goes.”

“You mean it depends on the price.”

“That’s a factor, of course. The chief curator of my department needs to see the work. The director as well.”

“Then I won’t be negotiating with you?”

“I’ll be involved, but this will get done above my head.”

“What a shame,” she said flatly. “We get along so well.”

He laughed nervously. She was so direct in her approach, yet so quicksilver in her moods, that he had no idea what to make of her.

“You could insist upon it. People do things like that. We had one eccentric old lady who would only speak to our junior legal counsel, because he went to her dead husband’s alma mater.”

“That’s brilliant.”

“The director didn’t think so.”

“Shall I do that? Would it help your career?”

“You know,” he said carefully, “you should probably leave the negotiating to your lawyer.”

“My lawyer. He’s a tricky guy, my lawyer. He may rob both sides blind.”

“Shouldn’t you have a lawyer you trust?”

“Oh, I guess I trust him.” She averted her eyes to the table before taking a sip from the mug. “He’s been taking care of Kessler business for thirty years, knows all the secrets. I couldn’t get rid of him if I wanted to.”

“Do you have a price in mind?”

“He does. Sounds high to me, but if the piece is as rare as you say, maybe not. I wish I could ask you what was fair.”

“I wish I could tell you. Fair is what the market will bear.”

“But we’re not testing the market.”

“I can’t believe your lawyer wouldn’t put out feelers.”

“You think we should be fishing around?”

“It would be a natural thing to do.”

“Talk to those pimps at the auction houses?” She spoke sharply. “They’ll promise the sun, moon, and stars.”

“They might get them.”

“What are you telling me, Matthew? That I should go to some rich private collector?”

Her stare was intense, and he found himself struggling with his unease, compelled by an impolitic honesty.

“Actually, I think that would be a terrible idea. Not for you, necessarily.”

“Don’t waffle.”

“It’s just, the thought of that work being locked away from the world, stuck up on someone’s wall…”

“Like it is now,” she pressed.

He exhaled slowly. “Yes. Like it is now. It would be a sad choice. It should be where a lot of people can see it.”

“A museum.”

“A museum would be the most obvious call.”

“But will a museum give it the attention it deserves?”

Fotis’ question again, and Matthew had no better answer for it this time.

“You can attach conditions to the sale. It’s done all the time.”

Ana shook her head. “My lawyer says we don’t have leverage with just the one painting. If I were donating the whole collection I could make demands. Or if it were a Picasso or a Rembrandt, maybe. Tell me if I’m wrong here.”

“You’re probably right.” He shrugged. “It’s still worth discussing.”

“Does it annoy you that Byzantine doesn’t get treated with the same respect as the Old Masters, or the Impressionists, or all of that popular stuff?”

“You know, I never considered popularity when I got into the field. I just studied what interested me, fool that I was.”

“But it must piss you off. The people who made this icon, it was like life and death for them, right? They held these things up before their armies when they went into battle. They died to defend them. Did anyone ever die over a Renoir?”

She was leaning over the table, eyes wide, hand gesturing fiercely. He wanted to laugh at the ridiculousness of her argument, but it was impossible. She was so sincere, so fully present in her emotions that it was he who felt ridiculous, made small by his own restraint.

“That’s true, except that it was really about religion. They killed and died over what the icon represented, not over its beauty.”

Ana sat back, nodding slowly at his words, or in acceptance of some new thought.

“That is what it comes down to, isn’t it? You can’t take religion out of the equation.”

She went to the counter, retrieved the coffeepot, and topped off their mugs, though neither had drunk much. The suit was gone today, she wore faded blue jeans and a white shirt, and he found himself distracted by the long arc of her leg in the tight fabric as she returned the pot to the counter. She remained there a few moments, her back to him.

“So Matthew, since we won’t be negotiating directly, I want to ask your advice about something. I know you’ll be straight with me.”

“I’ll try.”

She came to the table and sat down again, watching his eyes as she spoke. “Somebody from the Greek church called Wallace, my lawyer. They want the icon.”

He had guessed it before she spoke. Fotis was here before him, forcing the issue.

“The Greek church in Greece?”

“I’m not certain. The guy who called was an American priest, but it was on behalf of the church over there. I’m not really sure of the distinction.”

“It’s murky even to them.”

“Apparently, they hinted pretty heavily that the work was stolen from Greece, years ago.”

She was staring at him so hard that he felt implicated in the crime. This was clearly what she had wanted to talk about all along.

“Were you surprised to hear that?”

She sipped, not breaking eye contact. “No.”

“Are they offering to pay?”

“They didn’t float numbers, but yes, they’ll pay.”

“Where was it left?”

“Nowhere. We’re supposed to get back to them.”

“And what advice do you need from me?”

Finally she wavered, looked away.

“I’m just curious what you thought of the idea. I mean, I’m not seriously considering it.”

“Why not?”

“You think I should?”

“Stop throwing all these questions back at me, and think about what you want.” He had barely raised his voice, but she seemed stung. “Listen, Ana, there is no ‘should’ about any of this. I’m simply curious why you wouldn’t consider the church a viable option.”

“It’s a new idea to me, that’s all. I understand about dealers, collectors, museums. Then it’s just about the art. This is bringing a whole new element into it. They want the icon for totally different reasons. I have no way of comparing the two things.”

His thoughts were pulled in all directions: Fotis’ plans, his own desires, what he should tell her, and when-he could not bring it all together.

“I guess one way to judge would be to think about who will get to see the work in each case, and what each group would get out of that experience. You need more information.”

“But does that even matter? Let’s say the icon was stolen. Doesn’t it belong to them? And couldn’t they make serious trouble for me or for the museum?”

He had been intentionally evading the issue, but there was no way around it. The mere whisper of “stolen Nazi loot” by the Greeks would cause the museum to drop its interest in a moment. There wouldn’t even have to be evidence.

“Are those the arguments the church rep made to your lawyer?”

“They were more subtle, I’m sure, but he understood. And he made sure that I did too.”

“What is he recommending?”

“He’s not one to be intimidated, Wallace. As far as I know, the museum is still the first option, but he wouldn’t have even mentioned the church if he didn’t expect me to consider it.”

“Well,” Matthew struggled for words. “This is interesting.”

“Is it? I find it rather nerve-racking, myself.”

“You must be more undecided than you first let on.”

“I go back and forth.” She ran a hand through her hair. “No choice seems like the right one. My lawyer gives me this maddening, contradictory advice in his completely neutral tone, and all you can do is ask questions.”

“At least he’s getting paid. My advice is free.”

“You want me to pay you?”

“I’m asking questions that I think are going to help you know your own mind. I’m not in a position to tell you what to do.”

“Right now, I’d like someone to tell me.”

“I strongly suspect that if someone tried you would resist strenuously.”

She rewarded him with her first smile of the day.

“Do I seem that contrary?”

He leaned back in his chair and returned the smile. “It’s what I would do.”

“Really? Is there stubbornness lurking beneath that smooth exterior, Mr. Spear?”

“So I’m told,” he said to the rust-colored floor tiles. Best to get off that topic quickly. “Have you considered simply holding on to it?”

“The thing is, some of this stuff has to go. Despite how careful my grandfather was, there are estate taxes, other expenses. Pretty hefty ones.”

“Why the icon? There’s plenty of other work, isn’t there?”

“The modern I want to keep, that’s my thing. Of the older work, the icon is the most valuable piece.”

“Maybe that’s all the more reason to hold on to it.”

She placed both hands firmly on the table.

“OK, you want the truth?”

“Please.”

“The thing gives me the creeps, it always has. I know, it’s just paint, but it feels as though there’s something more, something lurking inside. Then there’s my grandfather dying in front of it. I want it gone. So, I’ve said it. Now you can be disgusted with me.”

“Hardly. All it means is that the work is affecting you. Maybe not in the way the creator would have wanted, but nevertheless.”

She was pensive for a moment, then broke into another smile.

“You mean the artist. Not the Creator.”

He blushed for no reason.

“That’s right. The little guy, not the big guy.”

“I’m sorry, I’m punchy. I need a break from this.” She checked her watch. “God, it’s late. You didn’t need to go back to your office?”

“I’m done for the day.”

“Is there someplace you’re supposed to be?”

“No,” but he sensed the kiss-off and got to his feet. “Just some reading to catch up on.”

He went to the sink to wash out his mug, childishly annoyed about being denied another look at the icon. This obsessiveness wasn’t like him, and he felt unnerved. The visit had been about what she needed, not about him.

“Leave that, I’ll do it.”

“No problem.” He put the damp mug on the counter.

“I was wondering if you want to have dinner. If you’re not too busy.”

Matthew shook his head at his own stupidity. When had he become this slow? Why was he misreading her, making things harder?

“It’s a nice idea.”

She was gazing at him serenely, and he waited for an excuse to roll off his lips. It was a terrible idea, in fact. There was this business matter between them, and she was an odd woman in a vulnerable place. Despite his sympathy for her, and even his fascination, he was made constantly uneasy in her presence. The hundred-year-old German grandfather clock in the dining room intruded a deep, resonant ticking into the expanding silence.

“I promise not to talk about the icon,” she added, and he thought about the walk home, past the dry cleaners and Chinese restaurants to his empty apartment, while whatever lame excuse he concocted echoed around in this old brownstone, and she sat at the table drinking coffee all night.

“OK,” Matthew said. “Sure, I’d love to. Where shall we go?”

As it turned out, they didn’t go anywhere. Ana thought they could throw something together, the only difficulties being that there was little food in the house and that she didn’t cook. She did know the wine cellar, however, and went to retrieve a bottle while Matthew chopped mushrooms and whisked four eggs with a little cold water. Sliced apple, some parmesan, and in minutes he created a perfect omelet, which they ate with toasted bagels and a 1984 Châteaux Margaux.

“This is the wrong wine,” Ana said.

“Not if you like it.”

“Do you?”

“Very much, not that I’m an authority. Too much retsina forced on me at a young age.”

“Retsina,” she groaned. “My God, that stuff is poison.”

“This is where I’m supposed to say-with my chin in the air, like this-that you haven’t had the good stuff. ‘That export retsina, Theomou, scatá!’”

“That’s good, you look like somebody.”

“Marlon Brando.”

“I was going to say Mussolini.”

“Gee, thanks. The truth is, all retsina tastes like tree sap to me. Greek food, French wine.” He swirled the dark liquid in his glass. The cooking had eased some of his tension. “Everybody, do what they’re good at.”

She stuffed a forkful of omelet into her mouth, as if she hadn’t seen food in days.

“Do all Greek men know how to cook?”

“It’s an omelet, Ana. Any single guy can make one, it hardly qualifies as cooking.”

“To you. In this kitchen it’s the height of culinary achievement.”

“I’m honored.”

“Can I ask a rude question?”

“Why start looking for permission now?”

“Why are you single?”

“Well, how do I answer that? Fate? I could ask you the same question.”

“We’ll get to me.” She adjusted her wineglass on the table, minutely, precisely, as if it were an important engineering project.

“So you’re not involved?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You can make a last-minute dinner date without having to answer to anyone.”

“Maybe my girlfriend is out of town.”

“Why make me guess?”

“All right,” he conceded with a tight smile, “you’re correct. I am currently unentangled.”

“Now how can that be? A handsome, intelligent guy like yourself.”

She said it casually, as if he must be used to such compliments, but Matthew felt his face flush once more. Maybe it was just the wine.

“This city is full of handsome, intelligent, lonely people,” he answered carefully. “It’s not such a mystery. Anyway, I just split with somebody I was with for a long time.”

“Whose doing was that?”

“Her doing. My fault.”

“Why your fault?”

“It was the Mussolini imitation, drove her nuts.”

“Come on.”

“Too many questions, Ana.”

“Sorry.” Her fork went down with a clatter. Her plate was empty.

“Looks as if somebody hasn’t been eating.”

“I forget, isn’t that pathetic? I’m a grown woman, but I forget to eat. When I’m in Santa Monica I have friends I always see for meals. Here, it’s more free-form. Actually, I used to have dinner with my grandfather a lot, before he became really ill.”

“Don’t tell me I’m sitting in his chair.”

“Eat in the kitchen, my grandfather? We always sat in that gloomy dining room, even when it was just the two of us. I don’t think he knew what the kitchen looked like.”

“Who did the cooking?”

“André. A sweet old guy, who I think I need to let go.”

“Maybe you should keep him,” Matthew noted, pointing to her empty plate.

“He’s almost eighty and wants to retire. I’ve already dumped Diana, that pain in the ass.”

“She was the nurse?”

“Thought she owned the place. My grandfather was sure she was stealing. I don’t know about that, but there was no reason to keep her. Gave her a nice severance and a good recommendation.”

“And you’re left with no one to take care of you.”

“And no one to take care of. I am also, how did you say it? Unentangled?”

“Here’s to that.” They toasted with their half-empty glasses, crystal pinging against crystal. “Do you prefer it that way?” The wine was loosening his normally careful tongue.

She stared off into space, seeming to consider the matter. “Not really. No.”

“All that jetting around the world makes it hard to maintain a relationship?”

“I never thought so, but it was definitely a problem for my exhusband.”

“The plot thickens.” He refilled their glasses, working hard to keep his hand steady, making sure to give her more. Two of his fingertips were stained red from the wine. “What’s the story with that?”

“Not much of a story. Married at twenty-four, divorced at twenty-eight. No kids, thank God. He was a painter, turned commodities trader. Not a bad guy, just immature and stupid. Almost as immature and stupid as I was. Tell you what.”

“What?”

“You did such a great job with dinner, why don’t you make the coffee?”

It surprised him how comfortable he felt in her kitchen. Perhaps because it wasn’t really hers, but her grandfather’s, or not even his, but old André’s. And kitchens were familiar. His family was always in the kitchen, his father doing as much of the cooking as his mother, holding forth on some complex scientific theorem, his sister arguing. Robin and he spent a lot of time in the kitchen as well, touching as they slipped past each other going to the stove, cabinet, freezer. Though constantly together, they had separate apartments, and he was always aware of being at her place, on her turf, not his own-except for her kitchen, which felt somehow connected to his, a seamless parallel space passing from West to East Side. He recalled her stinging reply when he once admitted this strange theory to her: he loved her kitchen because that was where the front door was. It wasn’t a long way from that comment to the end of their relationship.

“My grandfather loved good coffee,” she said to his back. “He couldn’t really drink it anymore the last few years.”

“Which explains this cheapo coffeemaker. Who bought this, Diana?”

“Actually, I did.”

“Sorry.” He really shouldn’t drink socially.

“I like good coffee too, but I can’t be bothered with the effort. Turkish coffee, that’s what he liked. Middle Eastern food, Orthodox religion. I think he hated being born Swiss.”

“Did he join the Orthodox church?”

“No. He sort of drifted away from Catholicism, tried a bit of everything-I mean, of the Old Testament choices. He didn’t do Buddhism. Eastern Orthodox art seemed to speak to him, and that’s what pushed him in that direction. I don’t think he even went to church.”

“So it was more a personal spirituality.”

“I guess. To tell you the truth, I don’t really know how religious, or spiritual, he was. Sometimes he seemed intensely so. Other times, it just felt like superstition. I guess it all feels like superstition to me.” She was quiet long enough that he wondered if he was expected to respond. “One thing I can tell you, though,” she said finally, “he worshiped that icon.”

Matthew came back to the table as the coffeemaker finished burbling. “So can I ask you a rude question?”

“Fair is fair.”

“If he worshiped it, like you say, why did he leave no directions for its disposal?”

She looked perplexed. “He left all that to me.”

“In most cases, with a collection like this, there are specific instructions about what should be done. Usually these things are worked out in detail with museums and galleries, long before the person dies. You must know all that. Did the will say anything?”

“There were instructions, but they weren’t specific. A lot of latitude was built in for me to do what I wanted, add to my collection, sell to cover expenses. He had no relationship with museums. He knew very few people by the end of his life. And he never mentioned the icon.”

“Do you find that odd?”

“I did,” she nodded. “Then Wallace suggested that maybe the icon was too personal to him, that he simply couldn’t deal with the idea of being separated from it, even in death.”

Matthew stifled a skeptical laugh. It had a ring of truth, after all.

“Mr. Wallace is a psychiatrist too, huh? Didn’t he draw up the will?”

“The primary will. Notes on the paintings were appended to my grandfather’s copy, in a safe, here. He didn’t believe in safe-deposit boxes. I guess that came from being a banker. At one point some pieces were left to Swiss museums, but those were crossed out. Wallace pressed him to come up with a plan, but he just wouldn’t deal with it. I think he believed he would live forever.”

“He did pretty well. Ninety-seven years old, the obituary said.”

“And very sharp of mind, right up until the last year or two. He had a bunch of illnesses and injuries in his eighties and nineties, all of which he bounced back from. I think the blindness really broke his spirit.”

“He was blind?”

“Almost. The last several years, his vision started to go. It was devastating for him. That’s when the other things, the arthritis and the weak heart, got the better of him.” Ana caught his eyes lingering on her a little too long. “That coffee is ready.”

The last thing either of them needed was more coffee, but it gave Matthew something to do, and he sensed that she took some comfort from his serving her.

“Wow, this is strong,” she said.

“Don’t drink it.”

“I’m up all night anyway, might as well be alert.”

“This has been very tough on you.”

“Mostly it’s the responsibility. There’s a lot to handle with the estate. I snipe at Wallace, but I’d be lost without him.”

“There’s no one else, no brothers or sisters, uncles, cousins?”

“My dad was an only child, and he’s gone. I’m his only child, so it’s just me on the Kessler side. There’s my mother, but she’s no help. She and my grandfather hated each other. Well, she hated him, anyway.”

“That’s too bad.” There was a story there, Matthew figured, but it was her business whether she felt like telling it. “You were close to him, right?”

“Off and on. Less so in recent years. Too much traveling.”

“You enjoy it.”

“Buying and selling art is what I do, for myself and a few friendly clients. I have to travel. But I do love it, it’s true. I keep waiting for the settling-down urge to hit me. You must travel a lot, also.”

“I lived in Greece, went to Turkey a few times. Ravenna, Venice, great Byzantine stuff there. Otherwise, I never go anywhere. Hate to fly.”

“Most people do,” Ana agreed. “I sleep like a baby right through turbulence. Must come from my dad owning a jet. I was always flying off with him someplace from the time I was, like, ten.”

“Was he in the art trade too?”

“The family curse,” she said, sadly, leaning back in her chair.

“Actually, he was a banker, like my grandfather. But he dabbled in art, especially when the old guy stopped being able to travel. In fact, he died on a business trip for my grandfather.”

Matthew wondered what to ask. She glanced over at him and he merely nodded.

“Plane crashed,” she went on. “Nobody knows why. Mechanical failure, I guess. He was a good pilot.”

“He was flying himself?”

“Oh, yeah, he loved to fly. But the circumstances were kind of awful. He and my mother were supposed to take a trip, about the same time that my grandfather was supposed to go to South America and see this painting. Another icon, actually. I guess the icon was being auctioned, or there was another bidder or something. Anyway, he got sick and persuaded my father to go in his place. So my dad flew down to check it out. And his plane crashed into a mountain in Venezuela, coming back. Took them days to find the wreckage and there was so little left they couldn’t figure out what happened. They think he was too low and hit the mountain in a fog bank, but we’ll never really know.”

He waited a few moments to see if she would say more, then found his voice again.

“When did this happen?”

“Fifteen years ago. I was in high school.”

“That’s a terrible story. I’m sorry, Ana.”

She shrugged. “History.”

“It must have wrecked your grandfather.”

“He was never the same. And my mother still hasn’t forgiven him.”

“Well. That’s unfair, but understandable, I guess. Given the circumstances.”

“I went through a period of blaming him, but it was no good. My dad could have said no. He loved that kind of thing, jetting off on a lark. You can’t live in fear of what might go wrong.”

“Maybe she’ll forgive him now that he’s dead.”

Ana scoffed. “Mother’s not big on forgiveness. She hasn’t forgiven me for reestablishing a relationship with him, and I’m her only damn child.”

He glanced at the clock above the refrigerator for the first time since arriving. It was late, after eleven.

“Doesn’t look like you’re going to get that reading done,” she said.

“It’ll wait.”

“Thank you for dinner. And for talking to me.”

“I don’t know that I said anything useful.”

“You listen, you ask good questions. And I find your voice soothing.”

“Almost puts you to sleep,” he countered, needing to make light of her words.

“Anything that puts me to sleep these days should not be disparaged.” She stood abruptly and stretched, rolled her neck about gently. “Come on, let’s make good on our deal.”

Matthew followed her down the old, looping staircase, his steps uncertain, his suppressed excitement leaping up again with distressing intensity. She fumbled for the lights in the small antechamber, and then they passed through the narrow arch. The chapel was smaller than he remembered, claustrophobic. He made a show of examining the panels from eastern Europe, stations of the cross, but his eyes were drawn inexorably back to the icon. The colors, subtle to begin with, appeared to shift about. The cloak was maroon, mauve, bloodred; the luminosity seemed to come from a place below the surface. Focusing on details usually helped, but the closer he got, the harder objective observation became. He grew agitated. One of the Virgin’s hands seemed to move, and he closed his eyes and stepped back.

“I’m not sure it’s good for you to be in here,” Ana said quietly.

“Don’t read your own discomfort into other people’s reactions.”

“I’m not. I’m looking at you, and you seem very uneasy.”

He shifted to avoid her gaze, then took a deep breath.

“Just tired. I should get going.”

In fact, he had no real desire to leave, but he was troubled by her attention, by her seeming need to get under the lid of his emotions.

“All right,” she answered.

He closed his eyes once more to compose himself. Then felt her hand on his shoulder, her lips on his, softly, gone again in a moment. She stepped back, the contact brief enough to have been only friendly if he saw fit to leave it at that. They faced each other for half a minute, enveloped by the warm light, the near walls. Ana tried to wait him out, but couldn’t.

“You’re not used to doing the work, are you? Things just come to you.”

“I’m sorry,” but it sounded less like the confused response he’d intended, and more like the apology it was. “Mostly, things just go away from me.”

“Poor boy.”

She turned to the door, but he reached out and gripped her shoulder. She turned back and kissed him again, more forcefully, and this time he took the hint.

8

He was supposed to wait on the sidewalk for the black sedan to come rolling down Seventy-ninth Street, but it was a cold day, and Matthew sat in the coffee shop instead. The big glass windows commanded a view of the intersection, busy with vehicular and human traffic, shoppers and museumgoers, marching beneath the little sign that proclaimed this stretch Patriarch Dimitrious Way. The Greek consulate was just down the street.

His concentration was shot-lack of sleep and a not altogether unpleasant state of agitation. Without warning, his mind shifted back a few hours to the warmth of her bed, the unexpected heat of her body. She had been so ready for him that a simple touch had been enough, and he had continued to touch her, in various ways, for some time, totally consumed with pleasing. He didn’t make a conscious decision to stay, simply found himself there in the gray predawn, her weight upon him before he knew where he was. Half-asleep, they rediscovered their rhythm and proceeded in a steady, dreamlike fashion, Ana laughing in embarrassment at her own pleasure, thighs spasming against his hips, her whole body responding to his every motion. He had held her for a long time, not speaking, smelling her hair, her skin, his mind and muscles relaxing for what seemed like the first time in weeks. A blessedly uncomplicated sense of how right they had felt together still possessed him.

Over breakfast, they talked about the icon again, and she seemed to come to a decision. Matthew encouraged her not to make up her mind too quickly, but he had not been displeased. At the door, she wouldn’t let him go.

“This was reckless,” she’d said, squeezing his hand. “We hardly know each other.”

“Knowing takes time. We haven’t done too badly.”

“I don’t even know how old you are.”

“Does it matter?”

“No.”

“OK, I’m fourteen,” he confessed. “Really, I’ve been shaving since I was eleven.”

Ana smiled, but her mind had already moved to something else.

“You wouldn’t marry her. That was the problem, wasn’t it?” Her words carried such certainty that he’d felt no need to respond. “That doesn’t make it your fault, Matthew. Just a decision.”

“I’m thirty.”

She’d made a show of being chagrined, but she couldn’t be that much older. Obviously used to being surrounded by older men. Eventually he had broken free and escaped into the frigid morning, but he could picture her still at the half-open door, in a gray cashmere robe, hair askew, blue eyes tracking him down the stairs, seeing him, knowing him in some deep and unsettling way.

There was a draft in the shop, and Matthew wrapped his hands around the porcelain coffee mug. When he looked up again Fotis was there on the sidewalk, just beside the bus shelter. The old man pretended to look around, but Matthew was certain he had spotted him there in the window before ever leaving his car. He stood, and Fotis looked directly at him, gestured for him to stay put.

“Am I late?” “No, I just didn’t want to stand in the cold.”

“We must get you a warmer coat. Why don’t we forget the walk and stay here?”

“Sure.” He hung his godfather’s coat and squeezed into the second chair across the table. It was a slow day, and the waiter was hovering instantly.

“This is the place with the good rice pudding?” Fotis asked.

“Best in New York,” Matthew confirmed.

“Two of those.”

The waiter slid the eight feet back behind the counter. Three of them worked in that small space, banging dishes, shouting at each other in some hybrid of Greek and Spanish.

“Now,” Fotis leaned across the table, “what is so urgent that it could not wait?”

“I would have told you on the phone.”

“These conversations are better had in person.”

Matthew tapped the speckled Formica table. He needed to pin the old bastard down.

“I’m pretty sure Ms. Kessler wants to make a deal with the church.”

The older man nodded slowly.

“This is excellent. You have done a good thing, my boy.”

“I didn’t do anything, except talk to her.”

“Did I not say that would be all that was required?”

“Anyway, I thought it would please you.”

“But not you, I fear.”

Matthew shrugged as the desserts were placed before them. Fotis began eating immediately.

“I think it’s the right choice,” the younger man continued,

“but I can’t help feeling that I’ve been dishonest. She doesn’t know anything about your connection with the church.”

“What is there to know? They asked for my help, it has proved unnecessary.”

“I thought I would tell her. About them talking to you, and you talking to me.”

Fotis continued eating methodically, pudding sticking to his huge mustache.

“You say she came to the decision on her own. If you tell her these things, you tell her to doubt her decision.”

“Maybe she should doubt it.”

The old man glanced up at him. “Why?”

“Because another buyer might pay her more. And a museum would be accountable for what it did with the work. Who knows what these Greeks will do?”

“Demand to know.”

“I’ve told you, I can’t demand anything.”

“Advise her. You’ve done well so far.”

“And why should I undermine my own museum’s interests?”

“That is a different issue.”

“I’m denying myself the chance to have this work at my fingertips, to examine it at length, any time I want. That’s a very appealing idea to me.”

“And that is a different issue still.” Fotis paused to chew as two large women with several colorful shopping bags each bustled into the tiny shop, gabbling in some Scandinavian tongue.

“Now we have the girl, the museum, and yourself. Who comes first?”

“It’s Ana’s icon.”

Matthew hadn’t meant to use her first name, but if the old fox noticed, he did not let on.

“Very good. She has taxes to pay, I understand, but her financial situation is sound. She has no real money needs. She may well have spiritual ones.”

“That’s not for us to conjecture about.”

“Her grandfather built a chapel to contain the icon.” The old man’s bushy eyebrows rose meaningfully. “Mother of God, what could be a clearer sign of his intentions than that? What could better honor his feelings for the work than giving it to the church? So there is the girl. The museum, truly, I must tell you that I don’t give a damn about them one way or another. Your loyalty is admirable, of course, but it is a big, rich institution which has no need of your protection. Eat your pudding.”

Matthew wasn’t hungry, but dutifully took a bite.

“As for what you need,” Fotis continued, the long spoon clattering in his empty dessert glass, “that concerns me greatly.” He wiped his face carefully and turned his eyes to the street. Always on the lookout, thought Matthew. For what? “The church will want to secure the icon before the girl has second thoughts, but they will not be able to take immediate possession. They have not made arrangements for transport, or for what happens to it over there. I can provide them with a neutral location to store it for a few weeks, insurance coverage, security. I do it for my own work anyway. And you may examine it during that time, whenever you wish.”

“There are companies that specialize in the storage and transportation of art. I could even recommend a few. I can’t believe they would leave that to you.”

“I tell you I can arrange it.”

Matthew squeezed his forehead. He needed sleep, needed to think clearly.

“Have you already arranged it? How deeply are you in with these people?”

“There have been discussions. Nothing has been agreed, but they will do as I suggest. I contribute generously to several of their causes, and unlike you, I am not ashamed to apply leverage. Anyway, they prefer to deal with countrymen, you know the Greeks.”

“And you’re doing this for what reason?”

“You don’t believe it’s for the church?” Fotis smiled at him.

“Suspicious boy. Very well, say that it is for myself. There is little in life that would please me more than returning the icon to Greece, and having a few precious days alone with it before that.”

“I see.”

“And you know, there is another person who might benefit.” Fotis eyed him keenly, but Matthew was unwilling to play. “Your father will be released from the hospital shortly.”

“My father?” A cold panic turned the pudding to lead in his stomach.

“Yes.”

“He’s not much for art. Or religion.”

“If you would remember what you have read, you would understand that faith is not always necessary for healing. It is in the general nature of the miraculous. Doubters are critical to any religion. Their resistance defines faith, and it usually says something about their hearts. The truly godless never bother to think about the matter. Your father’s scorn says something different to me from what he intends.”

“I’m sure he’d be very interested to hear that,” Matthew snapped, anger rising at Fotis’ daring to bring his father into this, even as the old man’s words stirred other, more elusive feelings.

“I would not be foolish enough to say it to him, and I trust that you will have the wisdom not to mention any of this. He will come to my home for a visit when he is out of the hospital. The icon will be there. The rest will be in God’s hands.”

“In God’s hands?” Matthew could barely contain himself. Private musings had leaped from his mind, from the old dusty pages in the library to his godfather’s lips. His own scorn died on his tongue, killed by some stronger emotion. Fear? Was it fear lurking beneath the cover of his righteous rage, and what should he be frightened off? “You honestly think that icon will miraculously cure him?”

“I expect nothing. I would not deny him the opportunity to derive some good from it. Why would you?”

“And for that ridiculous reason I’m not supposed to tell Ana Kessler the truth?”

“There is nothing useful you are keeping from her. And there are many reasons why you should allow the matter to take its course. Must we review them again? Do you need more?”

Matthew’s anger reached some critical mass and converted itself into paralyzing self-disgust. A man who knew his mind would do what he had to, would not sit here debating.

“Do you think the girl is telling you everything?” Fotis continued.

“What do you mean?”

“Only that she may have secrets of her own.”

“Like what?”

“I do not claim to know, but it is a strange and secretive family, from what little I understand. She has not hesitated to turn you to her own purposes, make you her personal adviser.”

“I’ve done that willingly.”

“It always feels that way with a woman, yes?”

“I don’t like your insinuations.”

“I withdraw them. You need no self-serving reasons to do what is right.”

“How do either of us know what that is?”

“You will do what is right because you are a good man. You do not require the spur of familial guilt and obligation.”

“Familial guilt,” spat Matthew. “You mean your guilt.”

“Are we not family? But that is not what I meant. The responsibility lies closer still.”

“Please don’t be mysterious, Theio. Say what you’re going to say.”

Fotis’ eyes were suddenly damp, and his face seemed to droop with his mustache.

“I did not want to speak of this. I break a trust by doing so. Do you understand me? To Fithee. The Snake.”

“The one who killed the priest.”

Fotis reached one long, shaking hand across the table and caught Matthew’s sleeve.

“We cannot know that he did kill him. He was doing what he felt was right, remember that.”

“Tell me.”

“Your Papou.” And he withdrew the hand, looked away. Matthew simply stared.

“Papou was the Snake.”

Fotis only nodded, back bent, hat falling over his eyes. Diminished. Matthew allowed any expressions of shock or denial to pass through his mind unspoken. Indeed, the longer he sat there, made mute by the terrible questions in his mouth, the more they tasted like truth. Had he thought about it before now, he might have guessed. Perhaps he had, perhaps that explained his present restraint. Killers grew into kindly old men. He knew his grandfather had an ugly past. His father had told him more than once that the man had done things of which he was now ashamed, things which haunted him. Certainly, there were circumstances that might explain what happened, yet Matthew had the feeling he would never learn what they were. He could fish for answers, but he would have to be careful, have to keep his own secrets from Andreas until he knew more. Even now, all these years later, it was clear that his grandfather was up to something here, something more than visiting his son in the hospital. He was hardly ever at the hotel when Matthew called, would not discuss whom he was seeing or why. Could it be about the icon?

“And if I ask him about this, he’ll confirm it?”

Fotis looked shocked.

“My goodness, child, what could he say to such a thing? He might speak true, he might invent a lie, I don’t know. More than likely, he will say nothing, but I think it would break his heart if he found out that you knew. I pray you will not mention it.”

In the silence that followed, the waiter laid a check on the table. When Fotis did not immediately reach for it, Matthew knew the old man was shaken. He took the check himself, idly folding it several times.

“Damn it, Theio. I wish I didn’t know this.”

Andreas, in the backseat with Matthew, fought the drowsiness that always hit him in an overheated car. The smooth driving of his granddaughter Mary, the scientist in training, did not aid his efforts. He had never known a woman to drive so well. In the passenger seat, Alekos was still and pale, but his eyes blazed with new life as he looked out on the wet spring woods. He had not expected to see this place again, thought Andreas; he is wondering if this is the last time he will see it.

I have missed his whole life, the old man pondered. When Alex was a boy, Andreas had been constantly away on one awful piece of business or another. Serving his country. Errands for some bloody-minded brute, or worse, some arrogant idealist, soon corrupted. Forced retirements when governments changed, the chance to lead a normal life thrown away when he was called back to serve the next fool as he’d served the last. It might take months, but eventually they all understood how much they needed men like him. Irreplaceable men, who knew all the secrets. Why did he go back, once, twice, how many times? Because it was all he knew? He could have learned something else. He could have been a man of business. Why did he allow himself to stay in that terrible game, where nobody won, where keeping the idiots in power was the only goal? On good days, he understood the need; there were real enemies. But then there were all those men broken in body and spirit for harmless beliefs. Men not so different from himself.

Before long Alekos was off to school in America, where he fell in love, and never returned home. Which was just as well, given what Greece became in those years. But the familial bonds were strained, and Maria’s death seemed to snap them. Andreas suspected some loose words from Fotis, either to Alekos or to his hard-hearted niece Irini, Alekos’ wife. There was no other way that his son could have learned certain things, things he would have been better off not knowing. God only knew what Fotis’ goal had been. To drive a wedge between father and son? If he had planned to step in and play surrogate father, that plan had failed. He alienated himself from the boy as well. The evil stories had bred others in Alekos’ mind, until he had come to see plots everywhere. Yet that explanation felt like letting Andreas out of his share in the blame. His absence, his actions, had somehow poisoned his child’s mind, made him turn a cold, scientific eye on life, which he found wanting in every regard.

Or perhaps he was being unfair to both of them. Every father wounded his son, it was almost a duty. A man needed to make his own way, and had not Alekos done that? His cynical, aggrieved manner aside, he had found a wife, made two beautiful children, been successful in his career. The price was the rejection of his old life, his old country, his father. It was fair. It may not have been necessary, but it was fair.

The house, a modest stone structure in this town of great brick mansions, appeared behind a stand of hemlock. Alex refused the wheelchair, and with his son and daughter supporting him, walked up the front steps under his own power. Inside, Irini helped him to his study, where he would rest until he could manage the stairs. Andreas was shown to a chair near a warm radiator, but when the others retreated to the kitchen, he joined them.

“He looks good,” Mary said. “I mean, he looks happy to be home.”

“God willing, we can keep him here,” said Irini, whisking an egg furiously. She alone seemed capable of action. “Babas, do you want some water?”

“Make your soup, I will get it.”

But Mary jumped up, which was just as well, since he did not know where to find the glasses. He’d been in this house only twice before and felt as if he were visiting distant relatives. It intensified his sadness, but he attempted to shut that out and gratefully accepted the glass of water from his granddaughter. Mary still had a girl’s face, but she was twenty-seven and not yet married. Too beautiful, the old man surmised; too many choices.

“Thank you, child.”

“Can I hang up your coat?”

“In a little bit.”

“Mom, I’m putting up the heat, Papou’s cold.”

“Please, I am well,” Andreas protested. Most old men of his country expected this sort of fussing, but he found it humiliating. He could not sit like a pasha, waited upon. He asked for what he needed, or got it himself. Otherwise, he preferred to be invisible.

“See to your father.”

“There’s nothing I can do for him.” The girl looked stricken.

“Here, sit by me.”

He squeezed Mary’s hand and stroked her hair. Matthew gazed at them across the table. Trouble swirled behind that brow. They had not yet had a real talk, though Andreas had been here nearly a week. Besides long stretches at the hospital, they had not seen each other. The boy was busy, but the time must be found. There was no question that his common sense could be trusted; it was more a case of saving him the mental turmoil which the old schemer’s machinations-assuming Aleko was right about that-might cause. A steadying hand was in order.

“Maria.” Irini was pouring the frothy soup into a bowl, then squeezing lemon furiously, filling the kitchen with its sharp odor. “Get a tray table and set it up by your father.”

Mary leaped up again, and both women headed down the hall to the study. The two men were left alone in the suddenly quiet kitchen, and the distance between them was palpable.

“Listen for screams and breaking china,” said Matthew.

“I think your father will take his medicine.”

“That’s right, avgolemono soup cures cancer.”

Andreas nodded. “It’s possible.”

“I’m sorry we haven’t seen each other. This has been a crazier week than I expected.”

“I have kept myself busy, but it would be good to share some time. Alone, not here.”

“Will you stay tonight?”

“If your mother asks.”

“She doesn’t ask because she assumes you will.”

Andreas waved off the subject. “Tell me how your work is going.”

“Hectic.” Matthew put his feet up on a chair. He looked tired.

“I’m clearing rights on some paintings for a new show. And I’ve been out a couple of days, doing research and making house calls.”

“This is about the Greek icon?”

“Much of it, yes.”

“And is the museum going to buy it?”

“To tell the truth,” Matthew answered, pausing for some internal discussion, “that’s looking doubtful.”

“Really? Why should that be?”

“The seller has gotten cold feet. Also, the museum has gotten nervous. Seems the icon may be stolen property.” The boy was staring at him hard. What did he know? Something, of course, but probably not much. “I guess that doesn’t surprise you to hear.”

“You know I grew up in that village, before I went to Athens. I was there during the war.”

“It was taken by the Germans,” Matthew added pointedly.

“That’s right.”

“And someone was killed trying to stop that.”

“How much has Fotis told you?”

The younger man’s prosecutorial style faltered.

“Almost nothing. Just what I’ve said.”

Was it right to finally speak of it? Would there be relief, or just more pain? Could he do it to the boy? Could he do it, again, to himself?

“Truly, what have you been told?”

“Nothing. I want you to tell me. I want to hear it from you.”

There was no noise from the study. It was as if the other three had vanished. The old man looked at the framed pencil sketch on the wall behind the boy, Alekos’ face in profile, done by Matthew at age fourteen. Highly skilled work. He is fumbling in the dark, Andreas thought, he doesn’t really know anything. Someone had let a loose word slip and the boy is pressing the case. I’m not the first he has asked, which means he’s had no satisfaction elsewhere. He thought of the promise he and Fotis had made each other years before. Did he still owe that silence after all that had happened since then? Was there a way to speak to Matthew of this without breaking that bond?

“I am sorry,” he said finally. “It is one of those foolish situations where if you do not know, I cannot tell you. It is a trust between your godfather and myself.”

Voices were suddenly raised in the study. Matthew’s expression grew distracted. Either he was letting the matter go, or he was casting about in his mind for a different approach. Then footsteps in the hall, and both men looked up. A bewildered and defeated-looking Irini stood in the doorway.

“He threw me out. Do you believe that?” Matthew pulled out a chair, but she would not sit, just leaned against her son. “He can’t bear to have me help him.”

“You were probably trying too hard.”

“I just wanted to make sure he actually ate it.”

“What, were you trying to spoon-feed him?”

“He was spilling it all over.”

“You’ve got to let him do things for himself. He doesn’t want to feel like an invalid.”

She sat, shaking her head, palms placed flat on the table, eyes on the large rain-spattered window. Then her gaze shifted to Andreas.

“You’re staying with us tonight?”

He shrugged.

“No?” Her voice was hard. “You’re going to make my daughter drive you into the city in the rain and dark, you selfish old man?”

He was taken aback by her fierceness, even as he recognized the need. This was not the passive, manipulative creature who had married his son thirty years ago. She had grown tough, and he was proud of her for it.

“I would never ask such a thing. I will stay, if you will have me.”

“You are very welcome here,” she answered softly. “You’ve always been welcome.”

Let’s not go into all that, he thought.

“I’m sorry to interrupt your talk,” she continued. Neither man responded. “I don’t know what all of you have been whispering about this week, and I don’t care. But there will be no secret discussions, no arguments, no terrible stories while you’re in this house. I won’t have Alex being upset, or anyone upset around him. Do you both understand me?”

She looked to Andreas first, and he nodded. Matthew followed suit.

“Good. I need your help, boys. Matthew, go sit with your father. Babas, you go put your feet on the sofa, I’ll wake you in half an hour.”

They both moved to comply with her wishes.

She kissed him there in the doorway, for all the world to see, and Matthew found he didn’t care. He could barely remember walking here, had found himself almost unconsciously carried to her doorstep. The impulse had been visceral, intense, go to her, his body knowing what was good for him better than his mind. Ana pulled him in the door and held him for many long, comforting moments.

“Your father’s home?”

“Yes. We brought him home yesterday.”

“Are you OK with that?” She stood back, her knowing gaze upon him once more, reading his doubts. “Is that good?”

“It is.” He seemed to discern the truth of it there on the spot. The hell with more treatment, home and family were what was needed. Care. Hope. Faith. “It’s good.” He smiled at her as if it were her doing. “We’ll see how it goes from here.”

When she did nothing further, he started down the hall toward the kitchen, his mind already seeing the stairs beyond, the small chamber and that other woman who was the third part of this triangle. Ana took his arm and pulled him the other way, toward the stairs going up.

“No, no icon today. Just you and me.”

He let her lead him up the stairs, his legs willing but his muscles clenched, while his heart began to race. Weird fears hounded him once more. He wanted to be up here, with her. He wanted to be down below, with it. She couldn’t really mean to keep him from it. The idea angered him, and the anger shamed him. He strained to control his emotions as Ana stripped her clothes off, slowly, methodically. It was no good. She saw everything, he could tell.

“I want this to be about us, Matthew. I want there to be some part of this that is only about us.”

She pulled his shirt up and pressed her breasts and belly against his skin. Her cool flesh and hard nipples demanded his attention. His body reacted, scorning his anger, ignoring the lack of instruction from his troubled, suspicious mind. Fotis’ words came back to him. Who knew what her own secrets were? At this moment, who cared? Her tongue found his; he remembered the night they had spent together. He wanted more of that, wanted to lose himself in her. The Mother of Christ receded, but did not disappear from his thoughts.

9

The priest sat in a low chair in the corner, yet seemed to command the room. In the few minutes of small talk that accompanied everyone’s getting settled, Matthew learned that Father Tomas was Greek-born but ordained in the American branch of the church, and served Bishop Makarios in New Jersey. He had arrived alone, no aide accompanying him. Fifty-some-thing, gray temples and curly black hair, a lined, trustworthy face, and kind eyes. Little was said at first about his purpose here, but he produced documents from the Holy Synod in Athens that seemed to satisfy Ana’s lawyer, Wallace.

In the only bright corner of the dark study sat the Holy Mother, on an aluminum easel, staring out at all of them. Matthew had looked at her a long time before the priest came, while Ana and the lawyer conferred, but now he turned his chair away and tried to clear his mind. Tomas had examined the icon when he arrived, but since then had mostly ignored it, his eyes instead roaming over the massive oak bookcases, hardly settling anywhere but taking in a good deal.

“Your grandfather collected more than paintings, I see.”

“Yes,” Ana responded. “He was very proud of his book collection. Maybe even more than he was of the paintings. I think he felt closer to them.”

“Of course,” the priest agreed. “One can be more intimate with a book, hold it, turn its pages. A book is a friend. A painting simply hangs there, aloof.” He glanced upward again. “I see some friends of my own on these shelves. Dostoyevsky. Flaubert. Kazantzakis. And some rare titles. Maybe we can talk books after we talk art.”

“How about we take one transaction at a time,” Wallace cut in. Late sixties, gray-haired and rheumy-eyed, a gravelly voice and a hacking cough that bespoke a lifelong cigarette habit, recently kicked, judging by his fidgety fingers. Nothing in his slumped posture, shifty gaze, or false-friendly delivery conveyed trustworthiness to Matthew, but Ana seemed to rely on and defer to him.

“Indeed,” Father Tomas said.

“Now,” Wallace shuffled his notes to no purpose, “I assume we can take your satisfaction with the work as a given.”

“If you refer to its artistic quality, I am hardly the proper judge, yet I pronounce myself well pleased. Of course, it’s suffered much wear.”

“Over the centuries,” Matthew said. “Not in the last sixty years.”

“In any case,” the priest continued, “while this might put off a collector, for my purposes it merely helps to establish the work’s age. And adds to its mystery.”

The lawyer cleared his throat, seemed to want to spit.

“And you’re satisfied that this is indeed the icon you’ve been pursuing.”

“The Holy Mother of Katarini. Again, I am not an art historian, but it conforms in every way to the description. Some of my brothers in Greece know the work firsthand, and will be able to identify it. What does your own expert say?”

All three of them looked at Matthew. Though he had resisted pushing Ana toward a decision, he’d been aggressive in his support once she made it, fearing that the lawyer might change her mind. He had even asked to be present for these negotiations. It hadn’t occurred to him that anyone would be asking him questions.

“Well, it matches everything I know about the Katarini icon. Of course, I haven’t tested it for miraculous powers.” Only the priest laughed. “I can say with confidence that it’s pre-iconoclastic, which alone makes it extremely rare, and that it’s a work of high artistic achievement.”

“In your opinion,” quipped Tomas.

“And according to the standards for religious art of that time.”

“You are Greek?”

A harmless question, but Matthew hesitated. “Yes, I am.”

“Then I shall consider your opinion doubly valuable.”

“So we’re agreed on those points,” the lawyer insisted.

“Indeed, Mr. Wallace,” sighed Tomas, with a long-suffering smile. “We can move on to the financials, as I can see you’re eager to do.”

“We discussed a figure a few days ago.”

The priest created a dramatic pause by sipping from his water glass, staring hard once more at the object of his affection.

“Hardly a discussion. You simply named a figure. A very high figure.”

“We don’t think so.”

“Perhaps a million and a half dollars is a modest sum by your own standards. The church of Greece is a small church in a small country, and I understood this was to be taken into account. We have never heard of any icon selling for such a price.”

“I doubt that an icon this rare has been offered for sale in any of our memories.”

“Fair enough. Yet an icon of considerable reputation was sold a few years ago for less than a third of the sum you name. That is the highest price we know of. It is perhaps lamentable that these items which we revere are not held in the same regard by the art community as certain secular masterpieces, but there it is. No one pays such prices for icons.”

“I have to tell you, Father, that we have already received an unsolicited offer of that much from a private buyer.” Wallace clearly enjoyed the silence which followed his little bombshell. Matthew was as stunned as the priest, and wondered if it was true. “Mind you,” the lawyer continued, “we haven’t pursued it, and it is not our desire to go private with this thing, but a number like that commands respect. Look, the Russian market is drying up. They’ve stolen everything they can out of that country. The price for all icons will rise, but for an extraordinary one like this…”

“Of course, one cannot account for the eccentricity of collectors,” Tomas said, recovering his composure. “I was under the impression that our only competition was institutional. Tell me, was the Metropolitan Museum prepared to pay anything close to this price?”

The priest was not looking at him, but Matthew wondered if he was supposed to respond. Instead, Wallace jumped in once more.

“We never got to that stage. For all I know, they might.”

“Even if it turned out the work was stolen?”

“You know,” Wallace said, lowering his voice threateningly,

“you are the only source for that rumor we’ve heard from.” His eyes went absolutely flat.

“It is a fact, sir, not a rumor,” the priest answered coldly.

“I’ve never seen evidence. And it’s an awfully convenient tool for driving down the price.”

“We can provide the evidence, I assure you.”

“You’ll forgive me if I remain dubious. In any event, the estate has certain minimum financial requirements, and if we have to turn to private buyers to fulfill those, so be it. I don’t think the collector we heard from would be troubled by this issue.”

“You would seriously consider such a move?” Tomas’ indignation filled the room.

“We are earnestly trying to avoid it. We are giving you the opportunity to keep the work available to the public and return it to its native soil, but you have to work with us, Father. Ms. Kessler has obligations to her grandfather’s estate which she must meet.”

Matthew realized that most of this was simply negotiating hardball, but the alternative which the lawyer threatened was exactly the one he feared, and he had to work hard not to convey his panic to Ana. Tomas became quiet again. Then the beatific smile returned.

“Let me, as they say, put my cards on the table. I have clearance to offer up to seven hundred thousand U.S. dollars. I am reasonably confident that with a telephone call to Bishop Makarios here and a few others in Athens, I could get that number to something very near one million. Beyond that, they will not go.”

Wallace readjusted his glasses and sat up in his chair.

“Well, that’s movement. We’ll take that as an encouraging step, Father.”

“Please do not misunderstand, Mr. Wallace. I have been straight with you; do not abuse me for it now. I have given you our best offer.”

“It’s enough.” Ana’s voice surprised them all. “Arthur, I think it’s enough.”

Nobody spoke for a moment.

“My client and I need to talk,” Wallace finally said. The priest shrugged.

“No,” Ana said quietly. “I don’t think that’s necessary. I know my mind here.”

“There is absolutely no reason for haste. We have some options to weigh.”

“I understand, someone else might pay more. It’s not important.”

“There are other issues.”

She looked at Matthew. “What do you think?”

He took a deep breath and made himself block out his fears, ignore the heat on the back of his skull from that ancient painted gaze across the room.

“Mr. Wallace is right. If you’re satisfied on the price, fine, but there are additional things you need to know.”

“Such as?” queried Tomas.

“What will her access to the work be after the sale? Will it be available for possible exhibitions of her grandfather’s collection?”

“Yes, I have those points here,” said the lawyer, tapping his legal pad.

“Where will the work be displayed?” Matthew continued.

“What sort of access to it will the general public have? What steps will you take for its protection and preservation?”

“Excellent points.” The priest nodded. “None of which I can answer definitively at this moment, except to say that I suspect we can satisfy you on most of them.”

“Let’s run through them anyway,” the lawyer grumbled, reasserting himself.

“Certainly any request by Ms. Kessler for a private viewing would be favorably heard. As for loaning the piece for an exhibition, I doubt the Synod would commit to such a thing.”

“I don’t care about that,” said Ana.

“The icon would likely hang in the cathedral in Athens. Wherever it is, it would be on display to the faithful. It is not our intention to hide it, that would contradict its purpose. Yet we will need to take measures to safeguard it, so that we do not again suffer its loss.”

“Of course,” Wallace answered mechanically. “I can put all the details into a draft of the contract.”

“Leaving us sufficient latitude, I trust. I am already agreeing to more conditions than most buyers would permit.”

“That’s part of the compromise,” the lawyer said evenly.

“These are the conditions we’re demanding in return for giving you a bargain price.”

“A bargain,” the priest scoffed. “Mr. Wallace, you could sell rugs in a Turkish bazaar.”

“You flatter me.”

“Not a bit. Do I take it we have an agreement?”

“There is no agreement until you see the terms, and your superiors approve the money. But I’d say we have an understanding. Ana?”

“Yes. Absolutely.”

The priest checked his watch. “I do not know if I can reach my people this evening.”

“See what you can do,” the lawyer said. “I’ll draft the paperwork, and we’ll wrap this up in the next few days.”

“Very good. I am most pleased by this. Most pleased.”

The priest smiled at all of them. If he was stunned by the speed of the negotiation, or his supposed good fortune, he was doing a good job of concealing it. Everyone stood to shake hands, and Matthew relaxed somewhat. It was happening. Now he had to keep his eye on the old men until the icon hung in the Athens cathedral. Then he could truly let it all go.

“I’m sorry,” Ana said.

The lawyer looked up from packing his briefcase, then gave her his most paternal smile.

“Nothing to be sorry for. I wish that we had been a little clearer on strategy beforehand, but no matter. As long as you’re happy with the result.”

“I’m happy to have it over with. I couldn’t stand squeezing him, he’s a priest.”

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” Matthew said, gently placing a drop cloth over the icon. There was an immediate sense of relief as the image vanished. “The Greek church is rich. Maybe not cash-rich, but certainly rich in holdings. They can afford it.”

“He just seemed so vulnerable, all by himself.”

“Vulnerable,” laughed Wallace. “Vulnerable as an iron safe.”

“Yeah, I agree,” said Matthew. “Vulnerable is not the word I would use, but I was surprised by the lack of advisers. I thought there would be a whole entourage.”

“Didn’t need them.” Wallace snapped his case shut. “He’ll have their lawyers vet the agreement before he signs, you can be sure. Meantime, he’s trusting his own judgment. I think they wanted to get this done quickly, and involve as few people as possible.” He wrestled himself into a tired green overcoat, coughing furiously. Then he patted Ana on the shoulder. “I’ll have a draft of the paperwork for you to look over soon. Take care, dear.”

She saw him to the door. Matthew wanted to walk out with the lawyer and ask a few more questions, but a look from Ana made him remain where he was.

“Thanks for being here,” she said when they were alone.

“Those were good questions.”

“Wallace had them covered.”

“I just needed you around.” She reached for his hand and he stepped closer to her. “Are you going to be in trouble with the museum?”

“Don’t worry about that.” In fact, if his role in this became public he could be in trouble with all sorts of people, but Matthew had put that thought aside whenever it came up. His work had suffered terribly in the last ten days, and he’d come to believe that he would never be able to focus on it again until this matter with the icon was settled, in a way which left his mind at peace.

“Stay awhile,” she said.

He’d had no intention of doing so. This business was eating up his life; he’d stolen time to be here, was behind on everything. The pressure of her hand held him. He could not leave her alone now, and he knew that in a few moments he would no longer wish to.

The connecting flight in Frankfurt had been delayed, and Father Ioannes arrived at JFK hours later than expected. Makarios was supposed to send a driver to get him, but Ioannes did not know where they were to meet and had not been able to find a working telephone. His baggage was lost briefly, then found on the wrong carousel. Leaving the men’s room, he became disoriented and could not find the Arrivals area. This is what hell must be like, he mused. This is when he needed the patience they had taught him on the mountain, but it came less and less easily as time passed. He would pray for peace of mind as soon as he was done silently cursing.

On the mountain they had taught him of a God very different from the one the village priests knew. The old priest’s God had been sad and angry in turn, like the man himself. The young priest also had preached a God of his own fiber, a passionate spirit who spoke to the needs of the moment, the need to resist, to survive. These deities fulfilled a purpose generated by man; they did what was required of them. On the mountain, they were not above invoking the angry God, to frighten the novices. Fear was known to sharpen the senses, and fear kept a boy in line until the mind, fed on incense and sacred visions, had grown sufficiently to accept the full depth and breadth of the true God, in all his glory. Ioannes had needed more time than most to achieve this readiness but had absorbed the lessons deeply. The terrors which defined his youth, which had initially held him back, became his sustenance once the path was discovered, became the fuel for the fire lit in his mind. Darkness was banished, and a door opened in his soul directly into the world of spirit. He would have been more than content to spend his life in isolation and explore the way.

The squat, balding young man in the leather jacket did not inspire confidence, but he knew the priest on sight, took his luggage, and guided him out to the parking garage.

“I’m Demetrios, by the way,” he said.

“I bet they all call you Jimmy here.”

“Yes. I know why you’ve come, I know what’s going on.”

“Indeed?”

“I work very closely with Bishop Makarios. I’m not just a driver.”

“I see.”

It was somehow appropriate that his masters would wrench him from his solace at the moment he had fully embraced it, and reintroduce him to the world. Ioannes hated them for it at first, yet came to know after many years that it was consistent with their message, consistent with the way. The world of spirit must reside within him; he must take it with him into the world of flesh and allow it to inform his decisions. Anyone could maintain faith within the quiet of sanctuary walls. The flock lived outside the walls, and the Word must go to them.

“You’re here to check up on Tomas,” Jimmy persisted as the luggage went in the trunk and they settled into the needlessly large black vehicle; the American bishops always had cars like this. “Forgive me for saying that you’re a little late.”

“What do you mean?”

“No one has been able to reach him for a few days. It could mean nothing, of course,” the burly driver added, unconvincingly.

The difficulty arose when the old masters died, and instruction now came from men younger than himself, men who did not have the inner fire in their eyes. What was required of a man when the inner voices no longer matched the commands of the outer voices? Ioannes had been feeling his way along for years now, but he sensed that this latest assignment would challenge his entire way of being. Maybe it was time.

“I have an appointment with Tomas tomorrow,” the old priest said.

Jimmy shrugged as the car made its way down the dim, winding ramp of the concrete garage.

“I hope he shows.”

Ioannes fought down a rising unease. Everything happened for a reason, and in any case he should not be trusting the word of this twitchy little fellow.

“Father Makarios and I will sort the matter out, I trust.”

“Makarios,” Jimmy snorted. “No offense, I love the bishop. But I’ll tell you right now, I’m the guy you’re going to need on this matter.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

10

He should have known better. The whole thing had felt wrong from the start, but Matthew had plowed mulishly ahead, needing to justify his actions to himself. The trouble had begun with the phone call the day before, Fotis suddenly skittish.

“The girl has spoken to you.”

“She says the contract was signed yesterday,” Matthew confirmed. “Tomas and someone else picked up the work last night. And deposited it with you, I assume.”

“All has proceeded as arranged, praise God.”

“That’s almost twenty-four hours. I really would have expected to hear.”

“My apologies. You are eager to examine it again. We must arrange a time.”

He’d had to force out the next words. “We had talked about someone else seeing it.”

“Yes.” A nervous whisper. “Do you think he is up to it?”

“I don’t know; he’s not up to much of anything. I thought that was the point.”

“I would not wish to cause him any unnecessary anxiety during his recovery.”

“It’s not a recovery, it’s a remission. Theio, this was your idea. What are you trying to tell me now? I’ve got to make an appointment, and my father is not welcome?”

“I am simply being careful. How will you persuade him to come?”

“Leave that to me. When should I bring him?”

“Tomorrow. It’s a Saturday, and I think you were to pay him a visit anyway.”

It was unnerving the way he knew everyone else’s schedule.

“Yeah, we even talked about a drive. I don’t think he had Queens in mind.”

“I will be here all day. And my boy, forgive this advice. Do not tell your father some foolish story. He will see through it and you will only make him angry.”

“You’re saying I’m not a good liar.”

“Tell him I’ve asked you to come and look at some art. It’s the truth. Tell him you want his company, his support. Let him feel he is doing something for you.”

His father had not objected but had agreed to the visit like a man condemned, sitting grim-faced and silent for most of the drive. At the house in Queens, Fotis greeted them with barely veiled agitation, working his green worry beads nervously. Canvases hung about the study, and Fotis and Matthew discussed a recently acquired Dutch landscape. Alex seemed to relax, and scanned the bookshelves around him. His wheelchair was positioned by the window, weak sun spilling over his strong shoulders, a fresh stubble forming an aura of gray light about his head. Six feet in front of him, beneath a white cloth, a medium-sized square panel sat on an easel, and Matthew could not keep his gaze from swinging constantly back to it, drawn by a special energy. Suddenly the whole production filled him with dread. Catching Fotis’ wet, round eyes, he saw that the old man shared his unease. Before he lost his nerve completely, Matthew stood up and stepped over to the easel.

“Dad,” he said, pulling the cloth from the work, half expecting something else to be beneath it until the eyes caught him once more, nearly stealing his voice. “This is the piece I’ve been consulting on. Fotis is holding it for a buyer in Greece.”

Alex turned his head to the panel only very slowly. There was a determined expression of resistance on his face, which loosened at once when his gaze met the image, and a true look of wonder seemed to play about his eyes. Matthew’s spirit fed off that look.

“I know you don’t have much use for religious art, but I find this one particularly affecting, and I really wanted you to see it.”

He took advantage of his father’s trancelike state to step behind the wheelchair and move it closer to the easel, close enough that Alex could reach out and touch the icon, if he wanted.

“Isn’t it beautiful?”

He could no longer see his father’s face, and there was no immediate reply. Then the large head seemed to nod, almost imperceptibly, and indeed the right hand reached up and outward. Did he actually touch it?

A spontaneous moan escaped Fotis at that moment. Alekos’ hand recoiled from the painting, and his head swiveled to stare at the old man. Matthew squeezed the handgrips of the wheelchair in frustration and also looked at Fotis. The schemer wore an expression closer to naked terror than Matthew had ever expected to see on that calculating face, and the young man could not tell whether the old one’s eyes were focused on Alex, or on the door behind them. No one said a word for several seconds. Then Alex shook his head slowly, as if clearing his mind of a dream, and when he spoke his voice was tight with disgust.

“Get me away from this thing.”

Most of the return drive passed in embarrassed silence. There was nothing angry or accusing in Aleko’s manner; more confusion, mixed with fatigue. For long minutes he seemed about to speak, and finally did.

“I don’t know what you intended by all this. Maybe you’re proud of the work and wanted to share it with me.”

“Something like that,” Matthew managed, eyes glued to the damp road.

“I know some things about that icon, some things your Yiayia told me, years ago. I don’t know the whole story, but both of those bastards have blood on their hands over that painting. I thought your Papou was going to tell you about it.”

“No. Fotis told me something. It was pretty awful.”

His father grabbed Matthew’s forearm.

“Listen to me,” Alex said firmly. “Are you listening to me?”

“I’m listening.”

“I mean listen to me.”

“Dad, I’m listening, for chrissake.” He fought the pressure on his arm to keep control of the wheel.

“Believe nothing Fotis tells you. Until you hear it from someone you trust, believe nothing. Do you understand me?”

“I hear you.”

“But you don’t believe.” Alex released him. “After all, what could your idiot father know?”

“That’s not what I’m thinking.”

“No? What are you thinking?”

Matthew grasped after his own thoughts, then shifted lanes quickly to make the exit off the expressway, which he hadn’t noticed coming up.

“I’m thinking that I’m hearing an awful lot of shit from everyone, and I don’t know what to believe.”

“Why would I lie to you?”

“I don’t think you’re lying, you’re just not saying anything useful. It’s this vague, angry ranting against those two that I’ve been hearing my whole life. What did they do?”

“They made a devil’s bargain with the Germans.”

“That much I know.”

“Talk to your grandfather.”

“He won’t tell me. I’ve tried.”

“Did you tell him whatever Fotis told you? Did you? No? Oh, that one has you wrapped around his finger. Ask your Papou.”

“I’m telling you he won’t speak to me.”

“He’ll speak to you. I’ll see to it.”

They sat idling at a stop sign, though there was no traffic in sight. Matthew pulled the shift arm toward him once and the wipers made a quick arc across the rain-speckled windshield.

“Why do you hate them so much?”

“I don’t hate them,” Alex said, “Any more than I hate a dog that’s been trained to kill; but I don’t trust them. They’re creatures of their time, and it was an ugly time. Greece suffered terribly during the war. Then the civil war, troubles with Turkey, Cyprus, all the changes in government, all corrupt. The politicians had a siege mentality. They were fighting to keep Greece free, so anything was allowed. Your Papou and godfather were government men, loyal soldiers. I don’t know the details, but I know they participated in some terrible things. You can see it in their faces. And it started during the war, with that damn icon. They took the first step from being freedom fighters to being political operatives right then. Trading with the enemy for guns to use on their brothers.”

“The communist threat was real,” Matthew insisted, accelerating away from the stop, surprised by his own defensiveness.

“They could easily have taken over Greece.”

“I don’t deny that, but it was a bad war that followed. Thousands were rounded up, tortured, locked away without charges. Some executed. Even the men who fought that war have trouble defending it. They just don’t talk about it at all.”

Matthew slowed the car as they neared the house. His father’s inarticulate rage toward the old men had been a feature of the family dynamics for so long that no one inquired into it any longer. But Alex had revealed more of his feelings in the last few minutes than in all the years preceding, and despite how angry some of it made him, Matthew was loath to let the moment pass.

“Is it impossible for you to accept that they did what they thought was necessary? That it’s in the past now and they’re old men?”

“Would you accept that argument for the Nazis in South America? For Milosevic or Karadzic?”

“Come on, you can’t put them in the same category.”

“My point is that their actions do not disappear because they’ve become old men. They did what they did. And they still have their hands in it. Don’t believe for a moment that they’ve given up those ways.”

“This is where you lose me. Fotis has been in this country for decades. Papou spends his time in his garden. What would the Greek government need with a couple of guys that old?”

“I’m not speaking of whom they work for, I’m talking about their ways. They’ve been bred in the ways of manipulation and double-dealing. It’s become instinct with Fotis. He has to have some scheme going at all times, business schemes, spy schemes, it doesn’t matter. He’s like a shark, in constant motion. If he stops plotting, he’ll die.”

“And Papou?”

“He’s subtler. I don’t think he takes the same pleasure in his work as your godfather, but he still takes orders from the Greek government, or some part of it. He keeps an eye on Fotis, and performs other jobs as well. Don’t believe that he came here just to see me.”

“I do not buy this stuff.”

“I know. I don’t know how to make you believe.”

They pulled into the driveway and Matthew killed the engine, yet neither made a move to get out of the car. Rain built up slowly on the windshield, obscuring the details of the house, but a warm yellow light shone clearly in the kitchen window.

“Why does Fotis have the icon?” Alex asked at last. “What happened with the museum?”

“The seller changed her mind. The Greek church approached her about the work, and she decided that they should have it.”

“How does that involve him?”

“They approached Fotis also, to try and influence the deal, I guess. He knows the estate lawyer. And to help arrange transport, so he got to hold on to the icon for a little while.”

“To what purpose?”

“For him? So that he could pray before it. It’s a very holy icon. It’s supposed to have miraculous curative powers.”

“The old bastard. Does he think he’s found a way to live forever?” Alex seemed halfway between rage and laughter.

“He’ll only have it a week or two, then it goes to the church.”

“How did you end up in the middle of this? You were supposed to be appraising the work for the museum.”

“I did. I really thought that would be the end of it. But Ana, Ana Kessler, the seller, she wanted me to advise her.”

“And Fotis encouraged this?”

“Yes.”

“So you talked her into the deal.”

“No, it’s what she wanted to do. I didn’t talk her out of it, though. I didn’t tell her about Fotis’ involvement.”

“You didn’t influence her at all?”

“If I did, it’s because I thought it was right, not because of him.”

“Are you sleeping with this girl?”

Matthew only sighed and leaned back in the seat. The air in the car was cooling, and the house suddenly beckoned.

“I see,” Alekos nodded. “He’s teaching you well.”

Matthew slammed the dashboard with his fists, startling both of them.

“Do you really think so little of me? That I don’t have any ideas of my own, that I don’t believe in anything of my own? Are you so consumed by this hate for them that you need to reduce everything to that level?”

Alex shook his head slowly, but he seemed more distressed at having upset his son than bruised by his words, making Matthew feel impotent in his anger.

“You shouldn’t take it personally. They’re masters. They’ve done it to me my whole life. If you can take a lesson from this, you can avoid some future pain.”

“What in God’s name do you think they’ve done to you?”

A figure appeared in the kitchen window, blocking most of the light.

“They’ve orchestrated my life. I’m a chemical engineer because my father wanted me to be. I live in America because he sent me here. Even marrying your mother…”

“What?”

“I shouldn’t speak to you about this.”

“You knew she was Fotis’ niece, that’s how you met her.”

“I knew she was his niece, but I didn’t yet understand who he was. He even pretended to disapprove, just to tempt me, knowing she and I would fight him.”

“And why exactly did he do that?”

“Who knows? Maybe he thought it was a way to steal me from his old pal Andreas, turn me into the son he never had. God knows he tried, but I saw through him soon enough.”

“This is bullshit.”

“You don’t know, you weren’t around.”

“I don’t need to have been around. I don’t even have to be your son to see through this, because either you loved her, so nothing he did mattered, and it was right. Or you didn’t, and it was wrong. Either way it’s on you, nobody else. So don’t try to feed me this garbage. And by the way, I know we’re having this heart-to-heart, but I don’t want to know the answer to that, OK? She’s my mother, so keep it to yourself.”

The figure had vanished from the window, and the rain increased. Matthew breathed deeply in an effort to calm himself. He could not have imagined, even minutes before, being so angry with his father. Yet it was a pure, righteous, cleansing anger, and he could not wish it away, even knowing the guilt he would feel later.

“Of course, that’s true.” Alex seemed deflated, yet his face still had a warm flush of color, unseen there for weeks. “I’m sorry I spoke of this. Please don’t ignore everything I’ve said. Please take warning.”

“Let’s go inside, you must be getting cold.”

“No. I don’t feel anything.”

Ioannes was sitting quietly at the kitchen table in the bishop’s small but ornate guesthouse when Jimmy entered without so much as a knock.

“Good morning, Father.”

“And to you, my son.”

“So, Tomas is gone. Vanished.”

“It would appear.”

“Left a whole congregation sitting in their pews last night, waiting on the word of God.” The little man paced the room restlessly, checking his pockets, pulling out a small pistol to caress it.

“Poor bastards.”

“Father Makarios told me.”

“Did he also tell you that half a million dollars of church funds disappeared with him?”

“I didn’t know the amount, but it was clear there had been a major embezzlement.”

“He’s the one you should be looking for.”

“I assumed that you and Makarios were doing that. Unless you are depending upon the police.”

“Hah. Makarios can’t even bring himself to tell the police, thinks the little devil will repent, show up with a good explanation. They hate a scandal. Anyway, I’ve got some people looking.”

“I suspect he took that money for himself, to go underground.” Ioannes spoke slowly, measuring his words. “I don’t believe he has the icon. He was fronting for a buyer. A donor, he called him, in his communications, who was supposed to give the work to the church.”

“But you never found out who the donor was.”

“He didn’t tell us.”

“He could have invented the donor.”

“Yes, he could have.”

“So who is this man you’re going to visit? Andreas Spyridis?”

Ioannes sighed. There were clearly no secrets within these walls.

“Someone who came here from Greece around the same time all this business started. Who has a history with the icon.”

“Not from the church?”

“No, a government man. Retired, but he still checks in, or they check on him, or maybe the Americans do. Anyway, we were able to locate him. I don’t know that he’s involved, but it’s a fair guess. I wish you would put that gun away.”

“You say government. You mean intelligence, state security, something like that?”

“Yes, but he’s old. Even older than me.”

“Old or not, we may need this,” Jimmy said, brandishing the pistol. “I’m not going unarmed.”

“I’m not asking you to go at all.”

“I think you will find that Father Makarios insists upon my involvement.”

“Yes.” Ioannes looked more closely at the younger man’s eyes and nose, the shape of his head. “You know, you look like him. The bishop. Don’t tell me you’re related.”

The little man did not like being identified.

“I’m his nephew. That’s not important.”

“And you are some sort of civilian detective?”

“Private investigator, we call it. But I work mostly for the church.”

“Ah, a knight of Christ. How unfortunate that they have enough work to keep you busy.”

“Why don’t we go see this man right now?”

“Because he’s not there. He left the city for a few days.”

“So we sit?”

“I’m sure there are other things you could be investigating. Do not let me hold you.”

“You know more than you’re telling. I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

“I need to emphasize that if you are going to follow me, you must do exactly as I instruct. I will not tolerate interference, whatever Makarios says.”

“All of you are the same,” the little man whined. “Think you know another man’s business better than he does. Why? Because a divine light leads you? Priests should not lead investigations.”

“Tell it to God, brother.”

The Connecticut coast sped by outside the scratched, dirty train window. Deep coves and marsh grass, still going from dead beige to pale green. White egrets wading about or lifting slowly into flight. Marinas, empty beaches, the bare gray outline of islands. Then dense stretches of wood, trees mostly bare but acquiring bright green or red halos of tiny leaves about them. The world returning to life. Andreas looked away from the window.

The trip to Boston had been a waste of time. He had seen the widow of one of his operatives. The man had done good and unrewarding intelligence work for twenty years and lost his pension when he came to live in America, rather than return to a Greece run by the colonels, a place he no longer recognized. Andreas had been unable to help him then, and could do very little now but pay respects. He had made dozens of such visits in recent years. They did not get easier. The American contact he’d met in Cambridge was an old friend, but he was at a lower level than Morrison, semiretired and teaching college, and could be of no help. It had sickened Andreas to sit there, trying to remember what a good man this was, how important human contact was for any soul, yet only be able to think in terms of the utility of the meeting. Information gained versus time lost. Had the ability to think in any other manner slipped away from him forever? He had even resented the widow, a woman of great kindness and courage, whom he would never see again. Disgraceful.

He was eager to get back to Alekos. That was certainly part of it, but his son was probably grateful for the break. The two could not spend much time in each other’s presence, whatever degree of underlying love there might be. Andreas would have to return to Athens soon, unless Alex took a turn for the worse. The hotel bill grew unwieldy, and there was a claustrophobia about New York he could not tolerate. The main thing was to make sure that Matthew had not gotten himself involved in any serious way with Fotis’ scheming. That was where his primary energy should have been focused all along, but he had gotten Müller’s scent in his nose again. Best to let that go. In any case, Benny had found nothing so far.

He had resisted acquiring one of those portable telephones that everyone carried, and he deeply resented the seven meaningless phone conversations that went on simultaneously in the seats around him. Yet he could see how they were useful; they might have been indispensable to his kind of work, in fact, if they had existed twenty years before. Being without one, however, he waited for the ten-minute break in New Haven to go down into the dank, silent tunnels beneath the tracks and place a call by public telephone. He began dialing Matthew’s number, almost by instinct, but hung up and then dialed Benny’s instead.

“Where the hell have you been?”

“I’m on the train. What is it?”

“I’ve found him.”

Andreas exhaled and closed his eyes.

“Are you certain?”

“Ninety-five percent. You’ll have to fill in the rest. When are you back?”

“Two hours.”

“Tonight isn’t good. Too much activity. Tomorrow, first thing, we’ll pay him a visit.”

11

It had been his intention to go back into Manhattan that same evening, but his mother had convinced Matthew to stay the night. Early Sunday morning he called his grandfather’s hotel but could get no answer in the room. Then he visited briefly with his father. Alex was too tired to rise, and Matthew settled for squeezing his hand, hoping that his expression would make the apology which his lips could not seem to issue. He took the train into Grand Central and walked to the hotel. It was Easter Sunday for the Western church, Palm Sunday for the Orthodox. Matthew had thought of going to services, but his mind would not be at ease while matters remained so confused, and he was certain that his grandfather would not be at church.

In the cramped lobby, the concierge took his name and telephoned the room.

“You can go ahead up.”

“He’s back?”

“He returned with another gentleman twenty minutes ago. Room 511. The elevators are to your right.”

Matthew had been ready to wait a good deal longer, and now he felt unprepared. It was difficult to maintain his anger, and his grandfather could use many means to deflect him. He must be firm, speak all that he knew, and demand answers.

A hard rap on the door brought footsteps and a muffled greeting.

“It’s Matthew.”

The door swung open, and a man stood there, tall, gray, and smiling.

“You are Andreas’ grandson?”

“That’s right.”

“Yes, yes, come in.”

The older man stepped aside, and Matthew entered. The room was not large. A double bed, television, desk, and two chairs, with a muted floral theme on the walls, cushions, and bedspread. Andreas was not to be seen, but there was someone clattering around in the bathroom.

“Sit,” said the man, placing himself in the chair closest to the door. Matthew remained standing, but wandered over to look down at the concrete courtyard below. He had learned not to ask questions of his grandfather’s business associates. The man’s presence was frustrating, as Matthew intended to press Andreas hard, but he was determined not to be run off. He would wait it out. The click of the bathroom light switch made him turn.

A short, thick, nearly bald man with deep-set eyes stood there, draped in a leather jacket two sizes too big for him. The light was off in the bathroom, and there was really nowhere else that Andreas might be. He was not here, and the two men were between Matthew and the door. Panic took the form of a blurry numbness, and he did not trust his voice to speak.

“Please sit,” said the older man again. “We should know each other.”

Matthew sat gingerly on the edge of the mattress. The bald one remained standing, patting his pockets distractedly, an annoyed expression on his face.

“You came looking for your Papou,” said the gray-haired man.

“So did we. As you can see, he is not here.”

The man was about Andreas’ height and weight, and the face had the same rectangular shape. Even similar features. Add the dark suit and shirt buttoned to the collar, and Matthew could see how the concierge might be fooled at a glance. Yet the man was a good ten years younger than Andreas, and far more kindly in his expression.

“What are you doing in his room?”

“Waiting. We are waiting, like you.”

“I think you were doing more than waiting before I came in.”

“Yes, well, we did avail ourselves of his absence to look around. I assure you that we have taken nothing.”

“You shouldn’t be in here at all.”

“By law, you are correct. But extralegal imperatives are sometimes stronger. In any case, we did not break down the door. We were given the key.”

“Is there any point in asking what you were looking for?”

“We’re not precisely certain. Maybe something that would give us a clue to where the icon is now. Yes, the icon, paidemou, don’t look surprised. What did you think this was about?”

“He knows,” said the bald one, in an irritated voice. “He knows where it is. Don’t you?”

Matthew processed answers, true, false, and in between. Which would protect him? Which would endanger someone else? Fear paralyzed his thinking. Could he simply get up and leave?

“You are in no danger,” the older man said gently. “But we must learn where the icon is. It is terribly important.”

“Why?”

“A fair question, and the answer is complicated. I believe that several people involved with the icon’s sale, including perhaps yourself, are operating under a misunderstanding. Truly, a deliberate deception. Tell me, have you met a priest named Tomas?”

After pausing too long to deny it, Matthew nodded his head.

“And he put himself forward as a representative of the Greek church?”

“Yes,” Matthew said, concern for his safety giving way to a deeper fear. “He’s not?”

“He is, or was. He is a priest of the church in America, but Tomas has occasionally done business on our behalf. He was pursuing an opportunity to acquire the icon for us. In the last week or so, however, he allowed his own interests to overcome his spiritual obligation. I believe. Truly, we do not know where Tomas is right now, so we cannot say exactly what has happened. I am being very honest with you, more than I should be, perhaps. In any case, we do not believe he is in possession of the icon.”

Which question to ask first?

“I’m sorry, but who are you?”

“The apology should be mine. Ioannes is my name. Father John, if you prefer. Many of my American friends call me that.”

“I’m Greek.”

“Of course you are.”

“So you’re from the church in Greece?”

“Yes.”

“And you came here to check up on the deal?”

“Tomas’ actions bred suspicion. Unfortunately, his superiors did not oversee him carefully, and we did not follow up with them until it was too late. I am here to see what can be rescued. The icon is of enormous importance to us. The joy at its discovery when Tomas contacted us was great, I assure you.”

“Wait. You didn’t know about Kessler having the icon already?”

“There were rumors, Kessler’s ownership among them. Most people thought it was in a vault in Switzerland. I had assumed it was destroyed.”

“So Tomas came to you.”

“That’s right.”

“You never contacted anyone here to act on your behalf? Someone outside the church, I mean.”

“Who did you have in mind?”

Matthew’s thoughts lost their grounding. The entire business was beyond his grasp, and a sickening realization loomed. And yet, having been fooled so easily up to now, how could he simply accept what he was hearing? Should he abandon his faith in Fotis so quickly?

“You know, I have to say, Tomas was at least as credible as you guys. He went through all the proper motions. He put down a lot of money. Where did that come from?”

Baldy spoke sharply in Greek, something to the effect that they were wasting time. Father John answered him quietly: where were they going in such a hurry? Then the older man leaned forward and stared earnestly at Matthew.

“Obviously, Tomas had a backer. The person who was really after the work all along. Perhaps you know who that person is.”

Matthew shook his head, in resistance rather than denial.

“You have no reason to trust me,” the priest continued, “but I am asking you to do so. For the good of the church, for the good of others who have been deceived, and in memory of those who have died for the work, I ask your assistance. Please, tell me where the icon is.”

Matthew’s inclination to trust was enormous, but he was coming to see it as a character flaw.

“I have to go to the bathroom.”

The bald one cursed, and Matthew stepped into the relative safety of the blue-tiled fluorescent chamber. Cold water on his face felt good but did not clear his mind. This priest was convincing. He exuded compassion and honesty to a degree that was nearly hypnotic. Could he be believed? Was it more complicated? A church faction fight, perhaps? The conclusion he kept returning to was the same one that had made him hold his tongue before: he could not turn his godfather over on such a slender thread of trust. He would have to investigate the matter himself, quickly, as he had been intending to do by coming here. That meant losing these two. Would they let him walk out? Did they have the means of following him without his realizing? There wasn’t time to lie low for a day or two, every hour might count.

Through the door he could hear a cell phone ringing. When he composed himself and stepped out, Matthew saw the bald one just putting his phone away as he jabbered excitedly to Father John. The swift, heavily accented Greek mostly eluded him, but through the buzz of words he clearly heard a familiar name. The priest looked up.

“Are you unwell?”

“I’m fine. I have to leave.”

“An associate of my friend here has made a discovery among Father Tomas’ abandoned possessions. A name, known to us. Fotis Dragoumis. I think he is related to you?”

Matthew nodded.

“You are close to him?”

“Yes, I am.”

“He is, perhaps, a dangerous man to deal with?”

“I don’t think of him that way. It might be dangerous for you.”

“Nevertheless, we must see him. I think you should come with us. What do you think?”

“I don’t know.”

“We will not force you. It is completely your decision. Somehow I feel your presence will make things less hazardous for both sides.”

Matthew absorbed the import of those words. The urge to be included in whatever fell out was overwhelming other considerations.

“I need to call him.”

“I cannot stop you. But if you do, he will be gone when we arrive, and neither you nor I will see that icon again. I think you know this.”

Still he hesitated. The priest was guessing; he couldn’t know for sure that Fotis had the icon.

“Scatá,” spat Baldy, bolting forward. Instinctively, Matthew’s arms shot out, the heels of his hands catching the other man hard in the chest, staggering him so that he grabbed at the mattress to keep from falling. Meaning to rush for the door, Matthew instead found himself advancing, a sudden unexpected rage replacing his fear in an instant, filling him. He hadn’t thrown a fist since adolescence, but he wanted to beat the stocky little man senseless. Baldy recovered swiftly and sprang at him, his heavy fist catching Matthew in the stomach, awkwardly, but hard enough to bend him double with a deep, nauseating pain. He braced for another blow, but then the priest was between them.

“Stamáta! Stop it, both of you.” Father John helped him to a chair, but Matthew would not sit, merely leaned on the pale wooden arm, pulling hard for breath. Baldy straightened his jacket, a combination of rage and surprise distorting his features. “Demetrios was not after you,” the priest said firmly, “he was headed for the door.”

Matthew had realized that a moment after he struck, and yet the anger remained, barely under control. And wholly misdirected, he now understood. His hands shook. The floor seemed to drop away, like the shaky scaffolding that Fotis had built beneath him. A lie; he had built it himself, using the shoddy materials his godfather supplied, the half-truths and flimsy reasoning. Ignoring every sign, letting the worthy goal justify all. He had been played. It was just as his father had warned him, he could keep the truth at bay no longer.

“OK,” Matthew said, once his breath returned. “I’ll go with you. But we do this my way. Fotis is very sharp, and he’s well protected.”

The priest smiled.

“Then we shall count on you to protect us.”

It was cold. Andreas had not been on the streets this early in a long time, and he was surprised at how the predawn chill penetrated him. He walked swiftly to get the blood flowing in his stiff limbs, knowing that he could not afford to be slow in the minutes or hours to come. Vigorous action might be required. He felt a tremor of unease rise up. He had poked and poked, expecting nothing, and suddenly he had stirred up the hornets’ nest. Things could easily get out of hand now, and he would have no one to blame but himself. Yet he couldn’t wish it were not happening. If it was Müller, well, a reckoning was required. Time did not wash away crimes, and instinct continued to tell him that the threat to anyone involved with the icon was real. He only hoped that Benny would be punctual, because it was very cold.

Shadows hung thickly in the narrow canyons of side streets, but the sky was slowly brightening over Queens. Some people were out already, solitary specters appearing not quite aware or awake. Taxis rocketed up Third Avenue. A silver-gray sedan sat before a brick bank on the northeast corner of an intersection. A small Japanese car, good for parking. The passenger door was unlocked, and Andreas slipped gratefully into the warm compartment. Benny was already smoking, and two cups of deli coffee were jammed into a plastic holder between them. The man’s demeanor was relaxed this morning, and he allowed the thin stream of traffic to pass completely before pulling onto the avenue.

“Where are we going,” Andreas asked.

“Not far. Yorkville. Germantown, they call it, but it’s really more Hungarian. Hungarian churches, restaurants, clubs.”

“I know the neighborhood.”

“There’s a kind of boardinghouse, run by a Hungarian woman. I didn’t know about it before, but someone put me on to it a few days ago.”

“And you sent one of the girls over with brochures?”

“Got in through the cleaning service, not that it’s any of your business. Anyway, he’s not staying in the boardinghouse proper, but in an apartment this woman owns, a few blocks away. Under the name Peter Miller.”

“Miller,” Andreas mused, skeptically. “That’s an old one. He hasn’t used that in years.”

“Maybe that’s why he chose it.”

“Benny, are you sure of this? Peter Miller is a very common name.”

“I saw him go in last night. Quite old, short legs, long torso, a slight limp.”

It sounded right, but it could be coincidence.

“How many apartments in the building?”

“You really have no faith in me, do you, my friend?”

“I am asking a few questions.”

“You are asking,” the younger man said sharply, “how I know the man was even this Miller, let alone Müller, and not one of ten thousand old men who live on the upper East Side. It’s a small building, eight apartments, two unoccupied. Four people went in who look like residents, younger people, briefcases, dry cleaning. That doesn’t cover the whole building, but it narrows it considerably.”

“Yes. It sounds promising.”

“I think we have your man. If I’m wrong, I’ll buy you breakfast.”

“What is the plan?”

“He went in late last night. I don’t think he will have left again. We park and wait. It’s a quiet street, we could pick him up, take him to a secure location. I have two in mind. Or we could do the business right there, but I wouldn’t recommend it.”

“Then why mention it?”

“In case it would be easier for you.”

In other words, thought Andreas, in case sitting in a car for an hour with a terrified old bastard who knows we’re going to kill him makes me lose my nerve. He had never actually agreed to Benny’s condition, but his failure to object had made the plan concrete. The moral issues did not trouble him; they simply weren’t set up for an operation like this. It was just the two of them, no other support was possible. No matter how well Benny thought it out, it was bound to be messy, with the risk of failure or discovery very high.

“I’m prepared to do it quietly,” Benny continued. “Sit him down on a stoop or against a car. It would take a few minutes, at least, for anyone to notice. It’s far from ideal.”

“It’s impossible,” Andreas snapped. “We haven’t even identified him yet.”

“You won’t know him on sight?”

“I think I will, but I will need to be very close.”

“So we pick him up.”

“What if there are too many people on the street?”

“Then we follow him. See what he’s up to. Wait for the next opportunity.”

They turned east on Eighty-fourth Street and headed toward the brightening sky. Andreas hated being so close to the target with only the vaguest sketch of a plan. In truth, he had participated in numerous ill-advised operations for the Greek security forces, but they went against his nature, and his fears were usually proved correct by some blunder. He liked to run a tighter ship. The English, and later the Americans, had been his models. Mostly he envied their resources: secure apartments, high-powered surveillance, teams of trackers. His own former agency now employed all these methods, but it no longer employed him. He was on his own, at the mercy of this skilled but lunatic Jew. Andreas reminded himself that the consequences did not greatly matter. Sloppiness insulted his professionalism, but it was the result that counted. He was no longer responsible for anyone but himself. To get Müller, after all these years, would be worth something. A service rendered, and a debt paid. Let them do to him what they wanted after that. He began to feel calmer, surveying each tree-lined block, checking the pedestrian traffic at each intersection. Things would go as they went, and he was prepared for whatever happened.

Benny pointed out the building, an old brownstone with a tall, worn set of stairs. Second floor, front right, was where he had seen a light go on a minute after Miller entered. There was no place to park, so they circled the block until a space opened up near the avenue, beneath a leaning plane tree, still mostly bare. In summer the street would be shrouded in leafy shadow, but at the moment Andreas felt completely exposed.

“Relax,” said Benny.

“We drove by the damn place three times.”

“Looking for parking. Everyone does it. Remember that he’s avoided detection for fifty years. Not everyone is like you, examining the stall for microphones before he shits.”

“There.”

A man came out the heavy wooden door of the brownstone and trudged wearily down the steps. In his sixties, dressed casually but carrying a briefcase.

“He doesn’t want to go to work,” Benny said, sipping coffee.

Andreas studied the man as he passed. Lanky, carrying a little extra weight. Exactly the right build for Müller, but too young, and the pink, freshly scrubbed face was not familiar. No one else emerged from the building for the next hour, while the sky grew brighter, and Andreas could feel Benny shifting restlessly in his seat.

“For all you know,” the older man said, “he may have left an hour after he entered.”

“I realize that.”

“To do this properly you must be prepared to wait hours. All day.”

“I’m aware of the procedure. I simply don’t like it.”

“That’s because you’re an analyst at heart.”

“I’ve done my share of fieldwork.”

And got expelled for overaggressiveness, thought Andreas, but it would not be the thing to say. A lot of good operatives got labeled overzealous by their uncreative handlers. It was the switch from analyst to operative that troubled Andreas. The skills were totally separate. For all their sharing of information, the two had never conducted an operation together. Yet Benny had been quite successful since going freelance, and had never steered the older man wrong.

Another forty minutes passed. Andreas nearly nodded off twice, and his legs were going to sleep. Benny continued to fidget and check his watch, finally popping his door open.

“Follow me in a few minutes,” he said, then was out and walking briskly before Andreas had time to object. An unpleasant surge of adrenaline coursed through him as he watched Benny move down the street, pass the target house on the opposite side, cross over at the far intersection, and turn back. Without deliberation, Benny bounded up the stairs of the brownstone and disappeared into the vestibule. Andreas swung his door open and got out.

Cool air struck him at once, and he felt his stiff legs shake as he maneuvered his way across the broken sidewalk to the steps. Benny’s large frame crowded the vestibule, but Andreas could see that the big man had already opened the inner door. They slid into the stairwell. Steam heat clanged in the pipes and fluorescent light flickered. The floor was black-and-white tile; battered mailboxes lined one wall and a steep flight of steps went up the other. Andreas left about ten feet between them as they ascended, and was surprised by the other man’s speed. Neither of them made a noise.

The apartment door was steel-encased and painted brown. Benny ignored the mirrored peephole and put his ear to the door. The pipes continued to clank and bang, but Andreas heard nothing else in the building, no stirring of the occupants. After a minute, Benny took a razor-thin, flexible plastic card and wedged it into the seam between door and frame, taking a full minute to explore from top to bottom. Searching for a deadbolt, Andreas understood, but what would he do if he found one? Was there a hacksaw or drill in that capacious jacket as well?

Benny stood, holding up one finger: only the single, visible lock. Next he drew out a set of master keys and began trying one after another, making unavoidable noise now. Either he’s not in there, thought Andreas, or he’ll be waiting to blow our brains out. Then another thought struck him. No anti-crowbar flange, one lock. Would Müller stay in a place like this? Trapped in an apartment was trapped, of course, whether there was one lock on the door or ten. The trick was avoiding discovery at all. Still, it was troubling.

The moment the lock clicked, Benny pushed the door open and slid in, free hand stuffed inside his jacket. Andreas waited two or three seconds, then followed. It was a typical railroad flat-a long, narrow strip of rooms-and the men had entered at the kitchen. The place was dark and they heard nothing. Benny went right, toward the muted light from the street windows; Andreas, left, into the empty bedroom. There were gray curtains blocking the dim light from the alley, a small bed near the window, and a single scarred bureau. A lonely landscape print hung on one wall, but the others were bare, the green carpet was thin and stained, and the whole room gave off an air of barrenness and transience. No one lived here; no one stayed here long. No one seemed to be staying here at all, though the bed looked slept in, then badly made up.

A closed door faced him. Andreas considered whether anyone would be stupid enough to trap himself in the bathroom like that, then remembered that he was not carrying a weapon and Benny was three rooms away. He sighed at the idiocy of the whole undertaking, then yanked the stiff door open. The place was tiny, large enough to shit, shave, and shower, and not a spare inch more. No old Nazi cowering behind the shower curtain. Andreas caught sight of himself in the mirror, his ridiculous old man’s face, pinched and lined and soured by decades of suspicion. He was a pragmatic man, an attentive man, and not particularly vain, and yet he often forgot that he was old. Mirrors always took him up short.

He looked away from the unpleasant visage, and his gaze fell to the sink. The porcelain was damp, and a thin film hung around the drain. He rubbed at it a bit, rolled the pasty matter between thumb and finger. It was the sort of residue one found often when there was a woman in the house. Foundation, makeup, exfoliate, any of the dozens of powders necessary to the maintenance of the public face. Of course, men used these things also. Possibly hair dye was included in the mix. Andreas closed his eyes, pictured the man with the briefcase who had left the building earlier. Add a few lines to the face, white hair, glasses. The limp would be easy enough to fake. And voilà, the ghost of Müller. The weight of it made him grip the low sink with both hands, nearly ill. Fool, he cursed himself silently.

Benny could be heard wandering back through the apartment, no longer trying to move quietly. Andreas went over and sat on the bed as the big man filled the door frame.

“No one.”

“So it would appear.”

“You were right,” Benny said in disgust, “he must have gone out again last night.”

“I think not. I believe that we actually saw him leave.”

Benny ignored the comment, went to the bureau, and began pulling drawers open.

“Have you checked this?”

“You will find nothing there. No coats in the closet. No toothbrush in the bathroom.”

His companion slammed closed the empty drawers, then wheeled on him.

“He’s gone, then?”

The older man’s mind had already begun to drift out over the city, across the East River into Queens. He’d had only Fotis’ word to go by on Müller. That, and his own desperation for it to be true, a desperation the schemer could smell on him all these years later. It was the most obvious ploy imaginable. What were you distracting me from, he wondered. Why am I always so many steps behind you? Nearly sixty years and still the student. Poor Andreou, indeed.

“No, Benny. He was never here.”

12

No activity was visible around his godfather’s house, and

Matthew climbed the steps with an awful sense of foreboding. Father Ioannes followed a step behind, glancing at the flower beds, while bald Jimmy waited in the car, an arrangement of which he had strongly disapproved. Matthew rapped hard on the door, reminding himself that he had the right of anger here. He had been deceived, or so it now appeared. There was no movement within. He knocked again, harder.

“Try the door,” the priest suggested.

It seemed to surprise neither man when it opened, but Matthew’s sense of dread became a black hole, swallowing all constructive thought. He stepped into the house. The parlor was empty but caught the day’s weak light through its windows. A recent history of the Byzantine Empire lay on a chair by the door, a bookmark at page ninety-one. A half-filled water glass was on the table. Through the gauzy curtains Matthew watched Jimmy quickstepping down the sidewalk, disappearing into the alley between house and warehouse. The situation was getting away from him. Where were Nicholas and Anton? Where was Fotis?

Back in the corridor, Father John stood by the stairs, and Matthew was tempted to try that way, but the study beckoned more insistently. He turned the knob and the heavy door opened. It was too dark to see much. Unsure where a light switch might be, Matthew shuffled toward the lamp on the big desk. His foot struck something soft and giving at the same moment a voice spoke, an old man’s voice, but not the one he was expecting.

“Stand still, my boy,” his grandfather said. Light instantly filled the room from a lamp near the far door, and there Andreas stood, raincoat, gloves, hat, piercing stare. Tall and still. “Watch your feet.”

Matthew looked down. The object he had kicked was a man. Nicholas, one of Fotis’ Russians, lay pale and seemingly lifeless at his feet. The eyes were closed, the mouth grimaced, and as Matthew’s vision continued to adjust, he could see that the oriental carpet was stained in a great, dark patch. A tangy, almost sweet odor hit his nose, and he stepped back instinctively, colliding with Father John.

“Merciful God,” the priest whispered, then began a scattered prayer in Greek.

“Do not touch anything,” Andreas instructed. Matthew ignored him and crouched down over Nicholas, steeling himself, feeling the cool neck, the lips. Was that breath he felt?

“I think he’s alive.”

The Russian’s right hand was clutched upon the side of his stomach, completely encased in blood, and holding a soaked-through handkerchief against where his wound must be. Andreas was suddenly standing over Matthew, pulling a fresh handkerchief from his own coat and beginning to wrap it about his hand.

“Give it to me,” said Matthew, possessive of the wounded man, determined to do one useful thing this day. Andreas handed him the handkerchief without debate.

“Yes, like that. You must hold it hard against the wound. I will try to find you a towel. Is it just the two of you?”

Matthew waited a fruitless moment for Ioannes to speak, then did so himself.

“There’s a guy in the warehouse. Jimmy, I think his name is. He has a gun.”

“I will call for an ambulance. Both of you stay here.”

The old man vanished so swiftly and silently that it was as if he had never been there.

“I hope they will not harm each other,” said the priest, kneeling now.

“Is your man dangerous?” Matthew tried not to look at his hand, to ignore the warm wetness beginning to cover it. The smell of blood was making him dizzy.

“He would like you to think so, but it is your Papou who is the dangerous one.”

“You know him?”

“Only a little, a long time ago. He will not remember me.”

Matthew looked around. The easel where the icon had sat twenty hours before was gone; the painting was nowhere to be seen. Some works had vanished from the walls as well. Which ones? Who else might have been hurt, killed? He should check the house, but he could not abandon his present task. Anyway, his grandfather would have done that already, unless he had just arrived. Or unless-

There was a noise in the kitchen and Jimmy appeared through the rear door, hands free of any weapon, Andreas a few steps behind. Both men seemed calm, if a bit flushed.

“Do we have everyone now?” Andreas asked.

“Where is Fotis?” Matthew shot back.

“Gone.”

“Gone where?”

“We will discuss it. Who are these men?”

“They’re from the church, in Greece. They say.”

“Mr. Spyridis,” said Ioannes evenly, “we must talk.”

“Yes?” Andreas eyed the priest keenly. “Perhaps, but this is not the time.”

“If not now, when?”

The wail of sirens filled the brief silence that followed. Far off, but getting closer.

“Maybe tomorrow.”

“You do not think the police will have need of you tomorrow?” The priest stood to face him. “I should think they would find your being here, alone, suspicious.”

Matthew awaited some convincing denial from his grandfather, but Andreas only stared.

“We shall see, Father. Perhaps they will look at the matter differently.”

Andreas placed a hand on Matthew’s shoulder and all of them became quiet as the sirens grew louder. Then Jimmy sidled up to the old man, desperation trumping embarrassment.

“Can I have my gun back?”

They were alone on the sidewalk. The ambulance had already pulled away, and police officers were going into and out of the house. Matthew did not know where the priest and Jimmy had gone, did not know what to say or not to say to the police when they questioned him. His grandfather stood beside him, staring down the empty avenue, deep in thought.

“I am sorry you had to see this,” the old man spoke quietly.

“You have never seen a wounded man, I think.”

“Papou, do you know what’s going on?”

“You ask me that? I had hoped that you might tell me.”

“The only thing I know is that nobody has been telling me the truth.”

“That is all?” Andreas gave him a hard look. “So you played no part in helping Fotis get the icon?”

“I’m not sure what part I played anymore. Fotis was supposed to be the middleman. He was assisting some people from the Greek church.”

“These men?”

“No, another priest, who represented the synod in Athens. Except now it seems he didn’t.”

“Who was the other priest?”

“This Father Tomas Zacharios.”

Andreas nodded. “I see.”

“You know who he is, don’t you?” Matthew struggled to keep a handle on his emotions, failed. “All of you know each other somehow, and I don’t know a goddamn thing. You’re messing with me the way you messed with my father.”

“Do not speak nonsense, and do not blame others for your own foolishness.”

The truth stung. He had been a complete ass, and it was time to face up to it.

“I have kept things from you,” Andreas continued. “I was trying to protect you, not hurt you. I would never try to hurt you. I do not know this Father Tomas, but I have heard of him. He is well educated and well liked, and has been a liaison between the Greek and American churches. He is also thought to be a swindler, blackmailer, and thief. Not to mention a friend of your godfather. He disappeared with a large amount of church funds within the last few days.”

“So it’s like Father John said, he and Fotis were in it together.” Of course, it could be another lie, but it made sense. There were no coincidences. Everything was connected.

“It seems likely.”

For no logical reason, Matthew’s mind veered away.

“Ana Kessler. Could she be in any danger?”

“I do not see why, her part in the matter is over. Do you have some reason for believing she might be in danger?”

“No, I just…No. I need to speak to her. I misled her. She never knew about Fotis’ involvement.”

“Tell me, why was he involved? Why was there a middleman at all?”

“He arranged it that way. The whole deal was his doing. He must have gone to Zacharios and had him contact the church, so there would be a gloss of truth to the thing. Where is Fotis now, Papou?”

“In Greece. Or on the way.”

“He went today?”

“Very early this morning. For Easter.”

“He never goes this early.”

“This year he decided to spend all of Holy Week. Phillip, his restaurant manager, just told me.”

“He told me a few days ago that he wasn’t leaving until Wednesday.”

“He changed his plans. Yesterday, Phillip said, right after you and your father visited with him.” The old man paused, awaiting some reaction. “Do you know why?”

Matthew tried to keep his body from shaking, his mind focused.

“No idea, but he did seem agitated. I think Dad’s being there made him nervous.”

“Why did you bring your father?”

The shaking grew so intense that Matthew had to clench his jaw to stop it.

“We must get you inside,” said Andreas.

“No, I need the air. I need to talk.”

“Why did you help Fotis?”

“I thought the church should have the icon. Ana wanted it that way, too.”

“But why allow it to pass through his hands?”

“I told you, he arranged that. I guess I could have prevented it, but it seemed so important to him to have it in his hands for a while. You know he’s ill.”

Andreas shook his head. “I wondered, but I did not know for certain.”

“He doesn’t talk about it. Anyway, the icon is supposed to have curative powers. The owners live long lives, the sick are cured by a touch, as if Mary or Jesus himself had touched them.” He looked the old man in the eye again. “But you know all that.”

Andreas grimaced. “Poor old fool.” Then his expression changed, and Matthew knew what was coming. His grandfather stepped closer and placed a strong hand on the younger man’s shoulder. “Is that why you went there with your father?”

Matthew did not answer.

“There is no judgment here,” Andreas continued, gently, shaking the shoulder now. “This is a piece of the puzzle. Do you believe in these things?”

“Of course not,” he said weakly.

The old man stared at him a moment longer, released him, and walked a few steps away.

“And I call him the fool. Your helping him made no sense to me. Now I see. It was not for Fotis’, not for yourself, even.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“No. It was a missing piece, the piece that fits the others together. It was in front of me and I did not see it. There is no shame, my boy, or the shame is mine.”

“Why do you think he left so suddenly?”

Andreas scanned the street as he considered the question.

“Possibly so that he would not be here when the action unfolded.”

“What do you mean? That he knew someone was going to rob him?”

“Not just knew. Planned it himself.”

“He stole the icon from himself? Why?”

“I am not saying he did, but there are many reasons, if you would consider the chain of events. How could he keep it when he was only supposed to be the middleman?”

“And you think he had Nicholas shot?”

“It cannot be ruled out. Or perhaps his scheming collided with someone else’s.”

“What else do you know that you’re not telling me?”

“In time, Matthew. I do not even know these things, I only surmise them. I realize that you mistrust me, and that I am to blame for that. It will take time to rebuild that trust. Just as understanding will take time.”

The shaking in Matthew’s limbs was diminishing, and with it the shock and confusion, replaced by something else. A cool resolve. Trust. It would be a long time indeed before he trusted again, and that was not a bad thing. He needed to stop answering so many questions and start asking a few himself. He needed to clean up this mess he’d made.

“Fotis told me some things.”

“I am sure that he told you many things. Some may even be true.”

“He told me you killed a priest.”

Andreas appeared perplexed by this.

“During the war,” Matthew coaxed, heart pounding. “He told me you were called the Snake, and that you killed a priest to get the icon.”

The old man’s face became an angry mask as understanding slowly sunk in. The transformation was so extreme that Matthew became alarmed, but he held his ground.

“Oh, he wants this thing badly,” Andreas whispered. “He must want it very badly indeed to tell you such a story.”

“Then it’s not true.”

“The priest’s death is on my conscience, and always will be. But I did not kill him.”

“And why should I believe that?”

The old man eyed him carefully. “He was my brother.”

“Your brother.”

“The Snake,” Andreas continued, the hard look slowly passing from his face, the hard edge from his words, “was what we all called Fotis, behind his back.”

Everything was turned around again. “And what did they call you?”

“My name, in those days, was Elias.”