The Icon

EPIROS, 1944

The trail was hard-packed earth, turning to stone, and Captain

Elias could not locate footprints or other signs of recent use.

He passed the tiny, burned-out village of Nikolaos, no more than a dozen scorched stone walls, on the largest of which some communist andarte had painted in large white letters: What have you done for the struggle today, Patriot? At Mary’s chapel, still well maintained, the path seemed to end, but the captain was able to pick it up again on the far side. It was indeed desolate ground, as Giorgios had said. High and rocky, no good for goats or planting. Only for God. The religious always claimed this sort of place.

Gregori’s chapel was easily visible a hundred meters above, although at first Elias had mistaken it for a boulder. It was the color of the gray stones surrounding it, walls and dome having faded years ago. Only the dark rectangle of the entry gave the place away. A nearly indecipherable path ran up to it. There were no trees, just a large rock or two, very little cover. The slope fell away sharply to the left and right, so it was straight up. The captain’s only advantage was that the doorway faced directly into the just-risen sun, and the little dell in which he stood was still in shadow.

Anger and the heedlessness of exhaustion drove him up the hill. He ignored the trail, using the rocks as he could, sliding left and right in no definite rhythm so as to make a poor target. Halfway up he heard a sharp crack, and a small stone jumped three meters to his left. Elias darted behind the last rock of any size between himself and the chapel. A wide miss; either Kosta was warning him, or something impaired his aim-perhaps he was injured? Elias drew his own pistol, rolled right and risked slipping down the steep slope, then scrambled toward the domed cell from a more oblique angle. He reached the structure’s northeast corner without drawing more fire. Now what? He could race in, shooting, but that would deprive him of the answers he sought. He could try to bargain, but Kosta would never believe that he would spare his life. The pistol shot was his only clue. Some hesitation there.

“Kosta, put down the gun, I’m coming in.”

To his surprise, the captain heard two voices within, arguing softly but urgently. It might be his only opportunity. Three quick strides and in the door. He saw the figure in back first, a cringing monk in a cassock, then someone just inside the entry, crouched in the shadows, head turned away. Elias struck hard with the pistol butt, and the crouching figure dropped as the monk cried out.

“Don’t hurt him, Captain, please.”

Elias looked about as his eyes adjusted to the shadows. The chamber was small, no hiding places. It was just these two. The one at his feet now appeared to be a boy, ten or eleven, a pistol loosely clasped in his limp fingers. Ioannes, Kosta’s younger brother. Then the voice of the monk registered with him and Elias looked hard at the man.

“Kosta.”

He sat behind a small, crooked table. The cassock was really a long, loose shirt, beneath which stained, hasty bandages were visible. A pink discoloration ran up his neck and disfigured part of his face in a ghoulish whorl. The right eye was squeezed shut and leaking fluid, and much of his hair was gone. Only the left side of the face preserved that handsomeness that had so charmed women and men alike, until just a few hours before. An empty wine bottle was on the table before him, the last of its contents in the cup Kosta gripped with his left hand, while tiny bits of something, paper or cloth, were by his right.

The icon leaned against the wall beside him, the two panels slightly split, but otherwise undamaged. Mother Mary’s eyes stared at the captain, seizing him with that dual power of judgment and forgiveness which Mikalis had always spoken of. It had soothed the priest. The captain felt only anger. All this for you, he thought, returning the painted stare. My brother, the old man, this young one, how many more over the years? A pagan goddess is all you are, demanding blood sacrifice. You should have burned. He lifted the pistol, as if to put out those damning eyes, but leveled it instead at his traitorous protégé.

“Wait,” Kosta said quietly, his tone resigned. He placed one of the little scraps near his right hand in his mouth, took a gulp of wine. Administering his own sacrament. When he had swallowed, he leaned back in the chair and nodded. Elias resisted the impulse to simply squeeze the trigger. “Please don’t kill my brother,” Kosta added then. “He doesn’t know what is happening.”

Elias glanced again at the prone child and Stamatis’ note suddenly made sense. Spare the boy. Not Kosta-he knew that life was forfeit-but the little one. How badly had he hurt him, Elias wondered. Why should he care? The boy had shot at him. The whole family was rotten.

“Why is he here?”

“I could not walk and carry the Holy Mother also.”

“So your father sent the boy along. Why not your sister, too? Why not the whole family, if the prize is rich enough?”

The other man said nothing.

“You betrayed me,” Elias continued, without heat, as if discussing the weather. “Not a man trusted you but me.”

“You sent me to do your dirty work, and I did it well.”

There was a new defiance in the voice-or had it been there all along, buried, released now by the flames that had burned the body?

“Of course you did. Thieving and killing are in your blood. I gave you a purpose, and you betrayed me.”

“Maybe I was being loyal to my family.”

“A pig like your father cannot command loyalty. Loyalty! You bastard, why did you do that to Mikalis?”

“He caught us with the icon.”

“Your father was still in the church.”

“He had trouble with the false wall.”

“You told him where to find to it.”

“Yes.”

“Because you heard me give Müller the instructions.”

“Yes, but they weren’t easy to follow. Then it took him time just to make a small hole. He thought he heard the Germans coming, so he started the fire, in front. The whole place was burning before he got at the Holy Mother.”

“How did he get out?”

“He meant to go by the rear door, but you and I and the others were already outside it by then. He heard the priest making noise, or else he would have run right into us.”

“Why not use the crypt?”

The burned face seemed to size the captain up, weighing words.

“He tried. There was someone waiting there.”

“Germans?”

“No.”

“Who?”

“Can’t you guess?” Shifting in his chair, Kosta grimaced painfully. Whatever relief the wine had provided was fading. There was no morphine or anything else within reach that would stem the hurt of such burns. Then a lifetime of disfigurement. I will be doing him a favor, thought Elias.

“Why did you have to kill him?”

“I didn’t want to. I nearly had him turned around when my father came out of the crypt, with the painting. Mikalis understood at once. He fought my father for the icon. I tried to drag him off, but he began to shout. You must have heard him.”

“We were shooting; we heard nothing. But that didn’t matter. He had seen what you were up to, so you had to kill him.”

“The first blow was only to silence him.”

“It is a vicious kind of wound, usually fatal.”

“I had no time to think. Even then, he kept fighting. The flames were all around us. I had to strike him again. He fell down the stairs to the crypt, still cursing us.” Kosta’s gaze was almost reverent with the memory. “I thought he might live.”

“He did not.”

Kosta nodded, his expression as sad as if his own brother had died. What strange animals we are, thought Elias.

“How did you get out?”

“The fire was mostly out in front by then. We made a run for it, through the burning.”

Images came to the captain, less like conjuration than memory. He saw the wall of flame, death on this side, survival on the other, but at a cost.

“I pulled the counterpane off the altar and wrapped it around me,” Kosta continued. “Then I went first, my father just behind. There was a charred timber, and I fell.” His voice cracked. “My father…”

“Left you.”

“No, he tried to help me.”

“He left you.” The scene unspooled in Elias’ mind, a vision, clear and absolute. “Worse. He ran over your fallen body to safety.”

“No.” But the young man was overcome, shaking in grief and pain.

“He is a dog, Kosta, who would kill his own child for gold.”

“He pulled me from the flames.”

“After. After he had placed the icon away from the fire.”

“You saw?”

“No. Who tended your burns?”

“My aunt. She is a poor nurse, I think. The balm does no good. My flesh is fire.”

“She had no time. Your father sent you away, so that he might stay behind and bargain. But he miscalculated.”

“How is my father?”

“Such burns take long to heal, Kosta. May never heal. Have you seen yourself?”

“I have not tried to. I must be hideous. Ioannes will not look at me.”

The boy groaned at the mention of his name, tried to sit up, bent, and vomited. Only then did Elias snatch up the heavy pistol by the child’s side. He was growing forgetful; he would soon make a serious mistake.

“Look, my friend, your brother lives. For how long, I wonder?”

“That is in your hands, Captain. I know how you and your master like to play God.”

“What is between Dragoumis and your father?”

Kosta only smiled, a lopsided leer with no heart in it.

“Come now,” scoffed Elias. “Your father, at least, I understand. You have no reason to protect Dragoumis. Every reason to tell me the truth.”

“That is so, I suppose. Except for the pleasure of seeing you struggle in the dark. You two spend more time keeping secrets from one another than fighting. You are feeble men.”

“You want to watch the boy die before you?”

The burned man rocked in his chair, the agony of his dead flesh relentless now.

“You will not kill him, I know you.”

Elias looked at the child, who looked back with a stunned incomprehension. He would not kill Ioannes, though he had not been certain of that until Kosta spoke.

“How is my father?”

“Why should you care?”

“He is still my father.”

Perhaps this was the way. Kosta should have known that his father was dead by now, but every man had his blind spot. Elias looked for a place to sit, but there was no place.

“The Snake has him. He will die, unless I intervene. Which I will not do unless you tell me precisely what happened back there.”

“You know what happened. What do the details matter?”

“What part did Dragoumis play?”

“And how will that help my father? You would believe anything I told you now, me, a dying man. I could set the two of you against each other. To what end? What do I care?”

“The men follow me. I can protect your father.”

“They follow you, but they fear the Snake. They will not cross him. I do not think that you will cross him either.”

“You think I fear him?”

“No, my captain knows no fear. You are a slave to duty.” Kosta began to laugh, then flinched. “My God, it hurts. Why do you not shoot?”

“Tell me what I ask, damn you, or I will make it hurt worse.”

“The truth, yes, I will tell you the truth. Listen to me. Everything was my idea. The Snake knew nothing. My father cooperated only because I threatened him. I threatened to tell you all of his dark schemes. No, wait, this is better. He stole the icon to keep you from giving it to the Germans. He is a patriot, a hero even, my father. What do you think of that? Tell your master that story.”

The boy was only taunting him. He had pushed him in the wrong direction. Now Elias would have to use other methods, and his spirit sickened at the thought.

“Kosta, I will make you speak to me.”

“I have told you everything. I did it all, stole the icon, killed your hypocrite brother.”

“What did you say?”

“All priests are hypocrites, liars. Religion is a lie. You have told me so yourself.” The false smile was now pinned solidly on the burned mask. “I did not think you even liked your brother.”

“Bastard.”

“Truly. I thought you might be happy that I killed him.”

“Be silent, you bastard.” The captain squeezed the words out, barely able to speak, his entire body a clenched muscle.

“Why should I be? I am beyond the commands of men. I have nothing to fear, or to hide.” He took a deep breath. “I am damned, and I will see your bastard brother in hell, where he burns right now.”

The action was involuntary, instantaneous. The roar and flash filled the small chamber. Kosta’s head flew back and a bright mist sprayed the ancient wall behind him, like an abstract gloss to the three-quarters vanished image of the saint painted there. The ringing persisted long afterward in Elias’ ears. Days and weeks. The arm holding the hot pistol dropped to his side. He understood immediately that he had been played, had probably understood it before he fired. The two of them had conspired in this ritual of provocation and reaction, so that they each might avoid what must otherwise follow. Yet Elias could not help feeling made a fool of. He had learned little. Kosta died protecting a father who was already dead, and Fotis kept his secrets.

The captain lifted up the icon, too small and light to support its reputation, it seemed to him. A stream of daylight through the door struck the surface, setting the gold leaf ablaze. Out of the shadows, the eyes no longer accused but seemed more frightened or sad. Like a mother who knew her son was doomed. The two panels were indeed out of alignment, looking as if someone had dug at the seams on one side.

Was he really going to give it to Müller? His brother had died trying to save it; should he not try to honor that brave, futile action? What then, keep it? Fotis or Müller would pursue it wherever it went. And forty villagers would be shot. Then Mikalis truly would have died for nothing. No, the last good thing Elias could do was trade the work for those lives. And the guns, he must not forget the guns, the original purpose behind this madness.

A small scrabbling sound caught his attention: the little one, Ioannes, with his bruised head and eyes wide as plates, staring not at his murdered brother but at Elias. There was no determining how much he had seen and heard, and he was now a problem. A witness against the captain, to any number of parties. The last male of his family, and thus the certain carrier of a blood feud. Logic dictated an obvious course. Fotis would not hesitate, but he was not Fotis.

He ushered the child out into the sunlight, where he began shivering uncontrollably. Then Elias went back inside and wrapped the painting in the old sheepskin jacket in which it had been carried to this place. Kosta stared blindly at heaven. The captain settled for closing the dead man’s eyes.

“I will come back for your brother,” Elias told the boy when he stepped back outside, the parcel under his arm. “I will not leave him here.”

The boy said nothing, stared off into space, though the shivering had receded somewhat.

“Walk,” said the captain, and they started down the hillside together. When they reached the trail, Elias looked south. He would have to go that way soon, but one more detour detained him. The boy must be put somewhere, and he thought he knew the place. Still, he lingered a moment, staring south, his mind traveling to Katarini. His village. Some way or another word would get out of what he and Fotis had done, and it would be his village no longer. He would have to leave then, and probably never return. It made no difference. His life would be in Athens after they drove the Germans out, provided the communists did not get it. He could not expect others to see the necessity of what he did. The world was full of small men, and yet it made him sad. Generations of his ancestors had lived here. His father’s bones lay in that village, and now his brother’s would as well. But not his own, never his own.

Captain Elias shook these thoughts from his mind, took the boy by the shoulders, and turned him north.

18

SPRING 2000

The tables around them in the cramped airport bar were empty. No one would know what to make of such an odd tale in any case, Matthew figured. He had not wasted the opportunity of Andreas’ coming to Kennedy to meet his flight, but had dragged the old man to the nearest quiet spot available and demanded whatever part of the story he was still missing.

“The exchange went off?”

Andreas sipped his ginger ale before answering.

“Yes. Stefano delivered the message. Müller was willing to make the deal, even then. The soldier we killed at the church meant nothing to him, he was gathering his riches. Many of the German officers were doing the same. Merten, the one in charge of Salonika, sank fifty cases of stolen Jewish gold off Kalamata, thinking he would retrieve it after the war.”

“I read about that.”

“Müller wasn’t after gold. Art, especially religious art, was his calling. He had heard about the icon somewhere, from his father most likely. Art theft was a family tradition. I learned this later, when I was hunting him. He had himself stationed in Greece just to find it. Between Göring, the art lover, and the Nazi obsession with the occult, I imagine the story of a painting with supernatural powers got him some attention. Maybe one of them even sent him to retrieve it, a birthday present for the Führer, what do you think?”

The old man’s tone was cynical, but Matthew felt the depth of his suspicion and disgust, felt a chill enter his own body. Was such a guess really so outlandish?

“Epiros was in the Italian occupation zone,” Andreas continued, “so Müller had to bide his time. Even once the Germans came in, there were all those villages in all those hills. Needle in a haystack, you say, yes? Greeks love to gossip, but no one could tell him the truth about the Holy Mother. Many villages had old icons, all of them liked to claim theirs was the famous one. Nobody knew where our icon had gone. After we beat back the Italians, before the Germans attacked, my brother had it walled up in a secret space near the altar, behind the iconostásis. A good spot. Only Mikalis, the carpenter, and I knew where it was.”

“Not Fotis?”

“No. That is why he had to come to me. Müller understood the political split among the guerrillas. The communists were strongest, so contacts developed between the Germans and the other groups. We were fighting them, too, especially in Epiros where that fat-assed Zervas commanded the republicans. But mostly Zervas was watching the communists, watching the royalists, whom he hated even more, until he made peace with them. As the war went on, and we knew the Germans would leave soon, everyone started to think about postwar politics.”

“Including you.”

“Yes. I was a republican at heart, didn’t give a damn about the king. I wanted a president, like in America. But your godfather and I served the government-in-exile, and that made us royalists. Better royalists, better anyone than the communists. Fotis and I agreed on that, and at a certain point it became the focus of our thinking. We fought the Germans, though, killed many, lost good men. Watched villages burn. My people fought.”

The old man sipped at his small glass again and seemed to go far away.

“So Müller came to you.”

“To Fotis. Fotis was our regional commander. He is from Epiros, too, from Ioannina, and went to Athens for training years before me. He was already an instructor when I got there. A very clever fellow, and strong, hardened in some way, as I wanted to be. We were Patriótis, so of course we became friends. I’m sorry, you know all of this already?”

“Most, but go ahead.”

“After the Germans cut off our army, we volunteered to go back to Epiros. The government was leaving Athens, and men were going out to every region to organize. Most never made it. The resistance sprang up locally, on its own, and the communists did the best job. Fotis and I worked with the British, brought letters and gold to Zervas. Can you believe it, they had to pay him to fight? Even then he delayed. Fotis was patient, but I needed something to do. The men from my area had formed a guerrilla group, and I joined. They lost their captain, and chose me to lead them.”

“You were very young for that.”

“Older than most. I had been in the army, and my father led guerrillas against the Turks, years before. That meant a lot to them, fathers, grandfathers. As if a hero could not father a drunken sot, or the other way around. Anyway, Müller contacted Fotis. Two men of the world. The icon for guns. Fotis persuaded me to go along with it. We needed weapons, ours were old and poor. Zervas was stockpiling what the English gave him, and we didn’t even know whose side he would be on in the end. The icon had vanished as far as anyone knew. To me, it already seemed a sort of…mythological creature. I was a modern man.”

Andreas’ words were sour, and Fotis’ defense echoed in Matthew’s mind. How could it have been my plan? To burn a church? To trade a work of such holy love and beauty? His godfather always told a lie with a piece of the truth. It was how he managed to be so convincing.

“Burning the church was Stamatis’ idea,” said Matthew.

“Yes.”

“And Fotis never meant to give the icon to the German.” He spoke the thoughts as soon as they came to him, as if translating for his unconscious. “The whole thing was an excuse for him to find out where it was. To get you to tell him. For all you know, it was he who approached Müller, and not the other way around.”

Andreas was silent a long time, staring past Matthew to the streaked glass wall and busy runways beyond.

“I have thought about those things all these years,” he said at last. “I had suspicions from the start. It was why I made the plan myself, which went all to hell. It was why I kept Stamatis’ note to myself, made the final exchange myself. I wanted to know what Fotis’ game was, but we killed the two men who could have told me. He, the father; me, the son. And as time passed I became less certain that I wanted to know. Because to know the truth might put my brother’s death on his head, as well as my villagers. And then I would have to decide what to do about that.”

“What about the villagers?”

Andreas clenched his teeth once or twice, the false ones clicking.

“Müller shot them.”

“What, after you gave him the icon?”

“The next morning. He took the icon and let me walk away, and we retrieved the guns that night. A good take, fifty rifles, a few machine guns, crates of ammunition. Fotis knew nothing until it was over. I made up a story about someone seeing Kosta, tracking him down, how I had to act swiftly to save my villagers. He was angry, deeply angry, but made a show of congratulating me. We still had to work together. The next morning Müller shot twenty people. He had been able to delay a day, but his men could not accept that there would be no retribution. It was part of their system; I should have anticipated that. He probably thought he was being generous, twenty instead of forty or fifty. Two of them were cousins of mine, one a woman, I would call her girl today. Glykeria. Her parents wanted me to marry her. She was shot with her father. Another was my messenger, Stefano.”

Matthew thought of photographs he’d seen, fallen, twisted figures in an olive grove, the entire male population of a village, lined up and shot; a German officer walked among them with a pistol, finishing off the wounded. It was Crete, he remembered, but it could have been anywhere in Greece. The death of Mikalis the priest became absorbed in those other deaths, like a drop of water in the sea.

“That’s why you hunted Müller all those years. It had nothing to do with the icon.”

“It had everything to do with it, but I was not looking for it, if that’s what you mean. The painting is bad luck. When I heard the shots fired that morning, I would have destroyed the thing if it had been in front of me. I wish it had burned in the fire.”

Matthew took a deep drink of his beer and imagined the icon, the chipped paint, the haunting eyes, enshrouded in flame. Blackening and peeling away to ash. If it had burned fifty years ago there would be no cause for this present strife. His godfather and grandfather might not be at odds. He himself would have been saved this troubling obsession. And yet who could say how many lives it had touched for the good? Between Andreas’ contempt-a kind of reverse superstition-and Fotis’ perverted reverence, Matthew had come to see only the negative effects, which had more to do with the men involved than the work. Was his own desire so impure? He wanted it, yes, but only to study, to sit in contemplation within its calming radius. Others must feel the same. The church had used the icon as a force of good for centuries without any legend of death or discord growing up around it. It was a matter of putting it back in the right hands.

“That’s a terrible story. I’m sorry.”

“Just one of many from those times.”

“There were lots of executions, weren’t there? They made the people pay every time you resisted them.”

“Yes.”

“But you didn’t stop fighting because of that. The icon was incidental.” Matthew hated the tone of his own voice. “Anyway, you needed the guns, right?”

“Oh, yes, the guns proved very useful later, for killing our countrymen.”

“Müller would have killed more people if you hadn’t bargained.”

“All my life,” Andreas said quietly, “I have been able to see through men. Not all the time, but often enough that I have come to depend upon it. Some fool will be telling me a lie and the truth will appear before me clearly, as if I am watching it. Like a film. I uncovered many secrets this way, saved myself from bad mistakes. Yet in every piece of business involving this icon I have behaved like a blind man. I see only part of the truth, and my decisions are always bad ones. Every step of the way I have made the wrong move.”

“Papou, you’re being too hard on yourself.”

“Not too hard, I think. The signs were there, a wiser man would have read them properly. I knew enough to keep Fotis out of the exchange, but I made a terrible mistake trusting Kosta. And it cost my brother his life. I made a bargain with Müller that anyone should have seen he could not keep. Twenty more died.”

“You couldn’t have saved them.”

“I chased a phantom all over New York while Fotis was making mischief right under my nose, using you.”

“You could not have known any of those things. And you’re not responsible for me. I’ve been a bigger idiot than anyone.”

“You were lacking information. And you have a weakness for this thing. There, again, he saw what I did not. He has been one step ahead of me all along. He still is.”

“If he’s not dead.”

“I would not wager on it.”

“You don’t think that was him in the car with Taki?”

“I have only secondhand reports, but the description, presumed age, everything I’ve been told sounds wrong.”

“I should have gone out there to identify him. Sotir hustled me onto the plane, didn’t want me mixed up with any investigation.”

“He was right. They might have held you for days, weeks.”

“At least we’d know.”

“Perhaps not, the body was badly damaged. I am glad you were spared viewing it. They will know for certain in a day or so-teeth, fingerprints. But it is not him.”

Andreas closed his eyes, pursuing his own thoughts. Matthew took another long swallow. He saw what I did not. What did Fotis see? What did Andreas imagine he saw? That Matthew could be coerced, or inspired, by faith? Was it true? Could one call these half-formed gropings, these awkward manifestations of awe, faith? Should he be ashamed of that? He was embarrassed now to think of his father before the icon. What had he expected, that the Holy Mother would reach out of the wood and smite him on the forehead, You are healed! Maybe only that the man would feel some of the mystery and joy that his son felt before the image. That the two would join in some silent communion there on the spot. Ridiculous.

“I wish I knew what the hell to do next,” Matthew said.

The old man looked him in the eye for the first time in many minutes.

“I have not dissuaded you from this hunt at any point. I have assisted you to the degree that I was able. True?”

“Sure. I was a little upset about Sotir, but he saved my ass, so I’m grateful.”

“Then what I must tell you now is to let this go. Two men are dead. Another in the hospital, another missing. This has become far too dangerous a pursuit, with far too small a reward. What would you do with the icon anyway?”

“Give it to the Greek church, as Ana Kessler intended.”

“Not good enough. Not a reason to die, or to put others at risk. She received money, and she is safer without the work. If she does not reverse herself, her story should protect you from prosecution. There is no reason to continue. Not to mention that the trail is cold.”

“What about the Russians?”

Andreas sighed.

“They are dangerous people. Information would not come easily. Chances are, they disposed of the icon days ago, if they ever had it.”

“What do you mean? Where did it go if they didn’t take it?”

“All I mean is that we have been underestimating Fotis.” Andreas looked hard at him. “I see I have made no impression on you. Does this mean you do not intend to give up the search?”

Matthew felt trapped, then suddenly angry, even furious, absurdly so. He wanted nothing more than to let this all go. It had frightened and sickened him. Why did it provoke him so to be asked to say it? I will let it go. Just say it.

“So the risk was worthwhile when you thought you might find your Nazi,” he said instead. “But now that there is no Müller, it isn’t. Is that about the shape of things?”

“The risk was never worthwhile, especially for you.”

“You’re asking me what I’m going to do. What about you? Are you going to let it go?”

“I want to know what happened to Fotis. If I can find him, I must persuade him to talk to me about old matters. I see now that this should have been my priority all along.” Andreas cleared his throat. “When I ask you to let this matter go, I do not speak merely of the physical search. I would like you to let it go in your mind, in your heart.”

A flight attendant marched past them to the bar, tall, blond, her professional smile replaced by an acute weariness about the mouth and eyes. She reminded Matthew of Ana.

“The police will be ahead of us with the Russians,” Andreas pressed. “That is where they have focused their efforts. I will make inquiries, and let you know what I learn. Would that help? Or would it help you more if I let everything go? There is your father to think of. The woman. These are more worthy objects of your attention.”

A hint of desperation had crawled into the old man’s speech. Matthew made fists with his hands, aware of his grandfather watching him. Why not just say it?

“The icon is poison,” Andreas whispered, hoarse with emotion, a tone so unlike him that it paralyzed Matthew’s anger. “It’s poison in your blood. Over and over this has happened; you’re not the first. You must cure yourself of it.”

“I need to go to the bathroom.”

Matthew stood quickly and left the table. Instinctively, he headed toward the rear of the bar, having no idea where the bathrooms were. He might well be going in the wrong direction. Let it go, give it up. Magic words. Why could he not bring himself to say them?

19

This was a bad idea, Ana thought. She had thought it from the moment the man on the telephone suggested the place, but it was only now, standing in the dim, cavernous nave of the cathedral, that it struck her just how foolish she was being. These underworld dealers were an eccentric lot, always concerned about safe locations. Her grandfather had dealt with a number of them, perhaps with this very one she awaited. That was the reason she was here. But they were not making an exchange; there was no reason for secrecy, for this Gothic, out-of-the-way location. Wouldn’t a coffee shop have done just as well?

The Cathedral of St. John the Divine was a lovely mess. No one would expect to find the world’s largest Christian church-short of St. Peter’s at the Vatican-on Morningside Heights between Harlem and the Hudson River. In true medieval fashion, work had been proceeding on it for a hundred years, was still not complete, and probably never would be. Ana couldn’t imagine the square towers ever outreaching Notre Dame, yet what had been achieved so far was remarkable. She always went the long way around in order to approach from the west. As she climbed the hill from Riverside Park on 112th Street, the massive, looming facade filled up the view, sunlight catching the fifty-foot rose window and every curve and adornment, the rows of larger-than-life saints made miniature by the whole. It might, as many right-minded people claimed, be a waste of money, but Ana understood the impulse to create on such a scale, to overwhelm the eye, to touch the soul with grandeur. It was a substitute for the pure spirituality that few could muster on a regular basis. It was made for people like her.

The broad, empty nave was large enough to seat an army. The aisles were lit by hundreds of yards of stained glass and lined with displays. As directed, Ana stood before the Holocaust Memorial, a fallen, skeletal figure stretched taut upon the ground. It was powerful but ghoulish, and after some minutes she felt a growing embarrassment at being made to stand there so long, as if del Carros were stirring up the darker rumors of her grandfather’s past by suggesting it. Simple paranoia on her part, no doubt. It was cold in the place, and Ana felt alone, more alone than she ever had before, and that was saying something. The emptiness of the church served to echo and enhance a hollowness inside herself. There were, in fact, a number of other people in the place, but the cathedral’s vastness swallowed them. She saw only tiny figures at a distance.

One of those figures was making his way toward her from the direction of the altar. Tall, or his leanness made him appear so, with short blond hair and spectacles over transparent blue eyes. Bland features, but a winning smile, which did not leave his face from the time he spotted Ana until the moment he stood before her.

“Ms. Kessler.”

“That’s right.”

“Jan Klee.” He put out his hand, which she took. A soft, European handshake. “I work with Mr. del Carros. Who is awaiting you, this way, if you would come along please?”

She followed him, trying to identify the accent. Must be Dutch, with that name. He walked with a casual stroll, yet covered ground with deceptive speed. Ana strode quickly to keep pace.

“I hope I haven’t kept him waiting long. I believe I was on time.”

“You are perfectly punctual, not to worry. Mr. del Carros is always early. And very patient.”

“How good of him. I’m always late, and impatient.”

Jan chuckled agreeably.

“I am also that way. Patience comes with age, I am told. Though you might expect the reverse to be true.”

“What do you do for Mr. del Carros?”

“Many things. Mostly I help him get around. He’s quite old, you know.”

“Right, of course.”

They passed through the broad crossing. Far above was the immense inverted bowl of the dome. Rust-colored and unornamented. Both of them stopped and stared a moment.

“One hundred and sixty-two feet,” Jan pronounced, “from floor to dome.”

“Wow,” Ana said, stupidly. “I couldn’t have told you that. You must know a lot about this place.”

“No. I just read it in that brochure.” He started off again. She was starting to like this guy. Anyway, she was pleased that del Carros had a studious assistant; it made all this feel more normal.

The name had troubled her from the moment it left Emil Rosenthal’s mouth, and she had racked her brain to think why. Her grandfather did not keep a diary, as far as she knew, but his calendars were large, leather-cased volumes in which he recorded a good deal of information. She had found the long line of black books a few days after his death, on a shelf in his study, fifty of them, numbered and dated. She’d meant to look through them then, but there had not been time, until yesterday. On impulse, she had turned to 1984, and found what she was looking for instantly. June 16 was circled, with departure and arrival times for a Pan Am flight to Caracas, a flight her grandfather never took, because of illness. Her father went instead, in his own jet, and presumably met with the man whose name was written below: Roberto del Karos. Two days later her father’s jet crashed in the mountains. The names were close, but close enough? And how common a name was either?

They went up a few steps into the south ambulatory, part of the semicircular corridor surrounding the choir and altar, and opening onto seven chapels. Jan stopped before an entry in the stone wall to their right. Unlike those further on, fronted by decorative iron gates that made them fully visible to the passage, St. James’ chapel was hidden away. Ana glanced at Jan and thought she found something challenging in his smile, saw an unnerving flatness in his eyes that was visible only close up, and he stood very close to her now. She was breathing too quickly; her pulse throbbed in her neck. This was ridiculous, the collector was only being careful.

“Just inside here,” Jan instructed, pleasantly.

Ana stepped through the archway. The chapel was deceptively large, big enough to be a small church, spare in its adornments, except for the highly detailed windows and a carved stone altar, four saints flanking a cross. A shrunken old man sat several chairs into one aisle, draped in a black raincoat with a gray hat in his lap. He was round-faced with a head of pure white hair and watery blue eyes, and his gaze never shifted from the altar, even as Ana slid into the aisle beside him. She left one chair between them. Jan had vanished.

“Thank you for coming, my dear.”

He looked at her now, one shy glance before shifting his eyes downward.

“Thank you. This was my idea.”

“But I’ve taken you out of your way.”

“It’s fine. I love this place.”

“Do you? It’s rather freakish, but I like it too. And it has these discreet corners.”

“Are you hiding from someone?”

“Oh, yes.” He grinned mischievously. “Many people. Does that surprise you?”

“Not at all. I know a bit about the complications that afflict collectors’ lives.”

“Of course, you are one yourself. And a dealer too, yes?”

Had she told him that? Anyway, Rosenthal could have; it wasn’t a secret.

“Strictly an amateur, on both counts.”

“But your grandfather was a great collector.”

“You knew my grandfather.”

“Not well. We did some business a long time ago.”

“Would it be too rude to ask what that business was?”

“Not too rude.” He was looking down again, shifting the hat about in his lap with his long, withered hands. “It’s simply that business is so boring. Especially old business, and I’ve forgotten the details. If I’m not mistaken, we are here to speak of more recent business. True?”

What was the accent? Certainly there was a Spanish lilt, but it overlaid something else. He didn’t look Spanish. She was getting distracted.

“You know, I sort of had a deal in mind,” she answered. “An exchange of information. I don’t want to sound mercenary. I’d like this to stay friendly.”

“No need to apologize. I understood the conditions. I was to explain my willingness to pay so much for your fine icon. You were to give me your best guess at its present location. I imagined that trading stories about your grandpa was something extra, just friendly conversation. Have I misunderstood?”

He was not a doddering old man, she must get rid of that idea at once. He had thought this through more carefully than she had.

“Let’s make this simple,” he continued, leaning in her direction. “We shall each take turns speaking, until we run out of things to say. I’ll go first.” He faced the altar once more. “There is no good reason I should have offered so much for the icon. It is a personal matter. My father was also a collector, and an art historian. Byzantine art was his special love. He had heard and read what little there was on the Holy Mother of Katarini, and then, between the wars, he went to Greece to see it. It was not easy. The icon had moved over the years, and there were several villages which claimed theirs as the true one. Maybe they believed it. The Greeks are not a people careful about history. My father bribed a priest, and was able to see the real icon, the genuine Mother of Katarini. And he became so entranced by it that he made the priest an offer to buy it. A generous offer, I believe, but it was no use. The Greek would not part with it for any price.”

“What was your father’s name?”

“William. It would have been William in English. In any case, years later, I went to see the icon myself. I was trying to be a collector also, though I had to do other things to live. My family was not rich, despite my father’s indulgence in art. I too fell in love with the work. It was…well, I need not describe it to you. You have had years to admire it. I envy you that.”

“I seem to have been less affected than others. Maybe I didn’t spend enough time looking closely.”

“Perhaps, but the effect is usually immediate, in my experience. Can I ask you, do you believe that Jesus Christ is your savior?”

“My goodness, there’s a question. I’m not sure that I do, to tell you the truth. Is that necessary to the proper appreciation of the work?”

“We are not speaking of appreciation, but something deeper. The work’s ability to move one, yes? To heal, to comfort, to teach, even. Is belief necessary? No, probably not. Not as a precondition, in any case, but one is unlikely to feel that caress of the spirit and be unchanged. Conversion goes hand in hand with the healing.”

He had a schoolteacher’s manner, this del Carros. There was no evangelical thunder in his speech, yet a certain quality of hushed awe had crept into these last words. Ana felt alien, isolated, denied something that all these men around her had been able to access.

“You really believe this?”

“I believe in my own experience. I am not a man given to fanciful thoughts, I assure you. My life has not been an easy one. I have seen much cruelty, and my sins are great. My sins are great,” he said a second time, as if hearing himself for the first time. The hands worked the crumpled hat furiously now. He had lost his way a little. “In some degree this belief is a burden to me, but inescapable. For the brief time that I held the icon, I felt a calm, and a love, that have lived within me always. I long for that feeling again. That is why I made the offer I did.”

He had said more than he intended, that was clear, and a poignancy like truth had infused his words. She believed in his reasons. And yet so much had been left out of the tale.

“Do you know how the icon made its way to my grandfather?”

He smiled sadly.

“You are hungry for the past. Me, for the future. I think it is your turn to speak now.”

He would tell her what she wanted if she could only keep him talking. How much truth did she owe him, after his little unburdening? How much did he already know?

“My grandfather had his own theories about the icon,” she began, for no reason in particular. “He thought it was a lot older than anyone guessed. That it had been made in Constantinople in the fourth or fifth century. Even that St. Helena commissioned it herself.”

“Indeed?”

Ana had expected scorn, or amusement, but in fact her words seemed to unsettle the old man. His watery eyes fixed upon her, no longer shy, and a stillness came over him.

“I suppose that’s ridiculous,” she added quickly. “I mean, all those really old works were destroyed, right? By fire, or the iconoclasts, or the Turks, or somebody.”

“Undoubtedly. But I wonder where he arrived at such a theory. Do you know?”

“Not really. Something he read, I suppose. Maybe something in the work itself.”

“I see.” His body language expressed terrible agitation, though his voice remained calm. “Did he have experts examine the work?”

“Not that I was ever aware of. He was very protective of it. A few friends saw it. It’s possible that one of them was an art historian.”

“But there was no close examination, no testing paint, playing with the frame, and so on.”

“Nothing like that, I’m sure.”

“I am relieved to hear it. You know, those people have no reverence for sacred art. Sometimes they do great damage in the course of examining. Your own expert, Mr. Spear, was also careful with the work, I trust.”

Again, Matthew’s involvement was no secret, yet del Carros’ speaking his name made her uneasy. There was nothing about this encounter, it seemed, that did not make her uneasy.

“He was very gentle. He only looked at it.”

“And what useful analysis did he provide you?”

None of your damn business, she wanted say, but restrained herself. There was more to learn here. Her real annoyance came from not being able to figure out what he was after. She no longer had the icon, so what she might have learned could be of little importance. Unless he felt that certain information held value, or threat, quite apart from ownership.

“Mr. Spear works for the Metropolitan Museum, not for me. He confirmed that the work was old, possibly as old as the St. Catherine’s group. That was about it.”

“Yet he has taken a very personal interest in the work’s recovery, has he not?”

“You would have to speak to him about that.”

“Very well. To the point. Where is the icon now, Ms. Kessler?”

“I never claimed to know exactly where it was.”

“Your educated guess, then. Whatever it was you came here to tell me.”

She stared at the altar, picking through the scattered facts in her brain for an answer that might halfway satisfy him.

“There’s a man named Dragoumis. A businessman, who was the intermediary for the church, or claimed to be.”

“I know who he is.”

“The police think that he might have stolen the icon from himself. The Russian mob was in on it with him. He used the church to get the price down, then had it stolen to avoid turning it over.”

He nodded slowly, but without satisfaction.

“Someone reading the newspapers closely could have discerned that much. Though I thank you for confirming it. Is there anything else?”

“The icon may be in Greece now.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Why else would Dragoumis have gone there?”

“I can think of a number of reasons. Do I take it, then, that you have no reliable information that the icon is in Greece?”

Ana prided herself on quick thinking. Even now, she could dredge up numerous tidbits of fact to support her assertion, but they would all be known to him, she felt sure. She remained silent. Del Carros nodded again and slumped back in the hard wooden chair, disappointed less with her, it seemed, than with the world in general. They both faced forward. A burly, bearded sightseer entered the chapel from the far door and began carefully examining the altar.

“Tell me, Ms. Kessler,” del Carros said finally, “why your continued interest in the work? You did receive a tidy sum.”

“I’m not interested in it,” she answered.

“I find that hard to believe. Could it be that you have found parting with it more difficult than you expected?”

“You find it hard to believe because you’re obsessed, so you think everyone else must be. It’s a bit egocentric, if you’ll forgive my saying so.” Her words carried more edge than she intended. Must be careful. “I truly don’t care about the icon. I’m only here because I hoped to learn some things about my grandfather. I guess I should have been clearer about that.”

“Then we have both been disappointed,” the old man said, empathetically. “And sadly, I now lack any incentive to speak to you on that subject. Though I could not have told you much in any case. So I must apologize once more for taking you out of your way.”

She was being dismissed. Just like that. As she had been her whole life, whenever she pressed too hard, whenever the questions got sticky. These men. Her father, her grandfather, Wallace, her miserable ex, Paul. Even Matthew. Push them at all and they clammed up, shut down, sent her packing, their precious mysteries preserved.

“I think you’re being a little unfair,” she said, trying to control her anger.

“Oh?” He seemed amused.

“I’ve tried to be straight with you. And you’ve really told me nothing useful. I don’t have the information you want, but I feel that if we shared ideas, we could help each other.”

“So, I am egocentric and unfair.” He was ignoring her overture. “Is there anything else?”

“OK. You’re dishonest.”

“And a liar also.”

“Don’t put words in my mouth.”

“And how do you believe that I have been dishonest with you?”

“You tease me with these hints about my grandfather, then tell me that you know nothing. And you left an awful lot out of that story you told.”

“Is that being dishonest? In my business we call that being careful. And you have been careful today also, though you are being rather careless now.”

“When were you in Greece to see the icon?”

“What does it matter?”

“Maybe it was during the war? And maybe you were there without an invitation? And maybe you had more in mind than looking?”

He no longer appeared to be amused, and she knew she had gone too far, knew it even as she was saying it. She was terrible at games. Quick to catch on, but impatient.

“Someone has been telling you stories,” the old man said slowly, studying Ana.

“No. Just some thinking on my own.” Too much thinking was a bad thing, she had heard. Too much talking about what you thought was worse. “Why don’t you set me straight?”

“Tell me what you’ve been told, and I will fill in the details.”

“I haven’t been told anything. That’s the problem, do you see? I’ll just keep getting things wrong until someone tells me the truth. Meantime, God knows what I’ll come up with.”

She had struck a nerve. He felt threatened by her. This was risky, and she must be careful not to overplay her hand. In the end, she was holding no cards.

“You think I was some wartime profiteer, yes? Because I did business with your grandfather.” He lowered his voice as the bearded man wandered closer, but his whisper was harsh, unpleasant. “Doing business with a thief does not make you one. We were very different men, I assure you.”

“Are you calling my grandfather a thief?”

“I have told you that my sins are heavy, but at least I know what they are. I was forthright in my actions, and I believed certain things, right or wrong. Your grandfather believed in nothing, had no scruples, played every angle. All from his fat, easy perch of neutrality.”

“Hang on now.” It was one thing to have your own suspicions, another to have a stranger attack what was yours. “I didn’t come here to listen to you insult my family.”

“Did you not?” He was clearly warming to his subject. His round, wrinkled face was flushed pink. “You came to learn about your grandpa, no? It’s what you have been begging me to speak of. What did you expect to hear? Does my opinion of him surprise you?”

Jan had appeared in the far door, shadowing the bearded man about thirty feet behind.

“I know he was involved in some shady deals,” Ana responded. “And he felt bad about those. But he truly believed he was saving works that would have vanished otherwise.”

“Child, you have no idea. The museums would not take work from him, and they will not take it from you, because they know it is tainted. Your legacy is dirty money. You sleep among pilfered treasures. I am sorry if I am the first to tell you this, but somehow I doubt that.”

Ana was too shaken to think clearly. She had broken his shell but had not found what she wanted inside. The bearded man wandered out the near door, and Jan doubled back to the far one. When she glanced at del Carros again, his face was placid once more.

“You know,” he said, in a very different tone, warm, surprised, “I now begin to think that I am the foolish one, and that you are a clever girl.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I think you do. You are too wise a woman not to know about your grandfather. You have deliberately provoked me, and I have reacted. And now, perhaps, you think that you have learned something. The question remains, why?”

“I haven’t learned anything, except that you hate my grandfather.”

“Is it for yourself or someone else? Come now, speak to me, do not be afraid. We are exchanging information, that is all, and it is clear that we have both been holding back.”

Two middle-aged women entered the chapel at the far end, gabbling happily, but their presence only slightly alleviated Ana’s rising panic. Do not be afraid. There were no more frightening words he could have spoken to her.

“I think I have to leave.”

He reached over and touched her arm.

“We should both leave. We require more privacy, I think. I intend to reward your cleverness with answers, but I will require some in return.”

“I really have to be someplace soon.”

He took gentle hold of her forearm.

“Ms. Kessler. I may have to insist.”

She bolted. His grip was just tightening as she slipped it, stood quickly, rattling the old chairs, and raced out through the near stone arch. Instinctively, she turned left, toward the front of the church. There was no danger that del Carros would catch her, but she remembered Jan’s coiled energy and watchfulness. Nothing could happen here, surely, with all these other people around, yet it was hard to be certain and she walked as quickly as she could without running. Down the steps into the open space of the crossing, past the roped-off section before the choir, and toward the central aisle of the nave. Halfway there, the bearded man appeared before her suddenly.

“Ms. Kessler,” he said, “wait.”

She reversed and immediately noted the side exit, simultaneously seeing Jan bouncing down the steps from the direction of the chapel. They nearly had her boxed. Ana ran now, pure adrenaline guiding her toward the daylight beyond the exit.

A steel staircase led down into the front end of a dirty, empty cul-de-sac between the cathedral and the sacristy. She turned right at the bottom and scampered toward the narrow parking strip that led out to the avenue. There was no one in the security guard’s box, damn it, just a square young man in a suit jacket standing in the middle of the lane, smoking a cigarette and looking hard at her. How many of them were there? This was ridiculous, what was going on, why the hell had she come here at all? And alone.

Again, she wheeled and went the other way. Five Asian tourists stared in wonder at one of the dazzling blue-and-green peacocks that roamed the grounds. Cameras whirred; a little girl shrieked with pleasure. Ana saw no safety among them and pushed on. To her right, steps and a broad path dropped away to a lower lane that led back to the avenue, but it was roundabout and she would be visible the whole way. She risked a look back and immediately felt like a fool. The square young man was embracing a woman and walking off arm in arm with her. Panic had sent her the wrong way. Jan emerged from around the corner of the sacristy a moment later, smiling and waving, like a friend asking her to wait up. Ana paused in confusion. She was jumpy as hell, had been since she arrived. Had she gotten it all wrong? Would Jan apologize now for the old man’s impertinence? Had she misread the whole situation? Too flustered to reason, she simply stood there as he drew closer.

The bearded man appeared behind Jan, and he did not smile or wave but bore down on them with a fierce energy. Released from her daze, Ana turned and moved off again, to the end of the lane: enclosed gardens on the left and right, the stone Cathedral School before her, and between the school and gardens a narrow path that seemed as if it must run out to Morningside Drive in either direction. She turned left instinctively, down the passage between walls.

Clearing the corner of the building, she saw her mistake. The greensward between the school and the rear of the cathedral was closed off from the street by a high chain-link fence; she would never get over it. There was no time to reverse. Like a child, she looked for a place to hide among the dense bushes. No, that wouldn’t do. Letting herself be trapped in an empty corner of the grounds would be exactly what they wanted. Meeting them in the open was her best chance. She raced back up the path.

Jan leaned casually against the stone wall of the north garden, smoking. He stood away from the wall as she approached, but made no move toward her.

“Ms. Kessler, you will exhaust both of us. I think there has been a misunderstanding.”

There was room to get past him, but she somehow knew he would be fast. An old woman’s hat bobbed in the garden. The Asian family had gone.

“Whose misunderstanding? Your boss threatened me.” She could not keep a slight quaver out of her voice.

“Threatened you?” Jan seemed amused by the idea. “With what, death by boredom? He only wants to talk.”

“Yes, by force if necessary. He’s got some wrong idea that he wants me to confirm. And he wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

“He has become quite a difficult fellow, it’s true. Stubborn, and his manners are appalling. We have discussed this, he and I. I’m sorry if he frightened you. I really don’t mean to make light of it, but he is just a harmless old man. Please come back and speak to him. I’m sure that he feels terrible.”

He had moved closer to her, without seeming to move at all, and she began to make a slow half-circle around him.

“I’m not going anywhere with him.”

“Of course not. We simply don’t want to part on bad terms.”

They walked parallel now, back the way they had come. Ana let herself relax a little.

“I’m going down to the street. If he wants to come out to the sidewalk and say good-bye, that’s fine.”

“The sidewalk will do. I’ll bring him by in the car and you can speak through the window.”

Jan was interrupted by a large figure lumbering out of the garden and colliding with him. The bearded man. Words were spoken, quickly, softly. The two did a little dance, and Jan swung his arm to fend the other off. There was a heavy clatter and the large man sank to his knees.

Ana took a step or two back, grasping at comprehension. There had been some swift, violent exchange right in front of her, too fast to see. The bearded man gripped his left forearm with his right hand, dark blood staining the sleeve of his jacket and welling up between his fingers. On the pavement before him lay a large black pistol, a little closer to him than it was to the still-standing Jan. Neither man moved for a few seconds.

“Ms. Kessler,” said the man on his knees, never taking his eyes off the Dutchman. “Please step away.”

Ana’s legs felt as heavy as lead. She tried to take in what was happening. Jan’s expression remained placid, but she could see his eyes gauging the distance to the weapon, the man, her. She also saw several inches of steel blade protruding from his right hand, held close against his leg.

“You will note,” Jan countered, “that this man assaulted me. I merely protected myself.”

“Ana,” said the bearded man, urgently, “Matthew asked me to watch you. Do as I say. Step well away from us.”

She stepped back several yards. She had the impression that the man on the ground, though pained by his wound, was not distracted by it. That he had sunk to his knees only to get closer to his fallen weapon. Now it was a standoff. Neither could reach the gun without exposing himself to a blow by the other, yet neither could withdraw and give up the gun to his opponent. Ana looked around for some figure of authority to break this up.

Then Jan was backing off, not down the lane but up the garden path, his free hand held close to his chest, as if ready to reach inside his jacket, but not doing so. The other man shifted closer to the pistol, even stretched his hand out, but made an equal show of doing no more.

“Ms. Kessler,” Jan said. “I’m sorry to see our business concluded this way. Please keep an open mind. And be careful of this man, he is clearly dangerous. In fact, I will wait a bit if you would like to leave now unhindered.”

How nice of both of them to worry so much about her.

“I think you better go, Jan. Before something worse happens.”

“Very well.” He smiled at her. “Do take care.”

He did not go right, into the garden, but continued up the path and through an archway in the brick wall that Ana had not even realized was there. Vanished, God knew where.

The bearded one was on his feet with the gun instantly, staring long at the archway, then all around them, ignoring Ana.

“You’re bleeding pretty badly,” she said.

He glanced at his soaked sleeve and nodded.

“Stupid. I didn’t know he would be so quick.”

“Were you trying to kill him?”

“No. That would have been easy, he was completely focused on you. I was trying to take him, but he was too fast. Lucky he didn’t kill me. I’m Benny, by the way. Sorry about this.”

He still barely looked at her. She realized that she should fear him, but did not, whether from instinct or from emotional exhaustion, she couldn’t say.

“Did Matthew really send you?”

“No, his grandfather, but on Matthew’s behalf. I guess the boy loves you or something.”

Ana felt dizzy, then nauseated. The shock hitting her, no doubt. She wanted to sit down on the pavement and cry.

“We should go,” Benny advised. “We can get a cab at a Hundred-tenth.”

“Where are we going?”

“To a hospital, first. Then someplace where we can keep you safe. You’ve stirred up some unfortunate interest.”

20

T he platform was emptier than he would have liked. Matthew made it a point not to take the subway late at night, but getting a cab near Grand Central had become impossible, and his feet naturally guided him down the long staircase and through the turnstile. A smattering of people were on the upper level, coming up from the trains or heading west down the wide passage to the Times Square shuttle. He descended to the uptown platform, to find almost no one there. Just a very large homeless man in a filthy red bandanna, muttering to himself. Anxious and sleep-deprived, Matthew wandered north along the dirty concrete.

You must cure yourself.

He had let everything go for days now but the all-consuming chase. Thoughts of his father and Ana had broken through, but not sufficiently to distract him. He had not checked his answering machine until getting back from Greece, and he was stung to find two messages from his mother, angry that he had not called. There was one from Ana also. She was doing some research; they could compare notes when he returned. There was no warmth in her words-she was all business-but he took comfort in the fact that she had called at all. He went straight to his parents’ house, before even going to his apartment, and tried her from there this morning, but there was no answer.

Despite his mother’s protests to the contrary, his father looked stronger. He had more color and energy, and felt good enough to give Matthew hell about vanishing. The visit had been tense, but they both felt better by the end of it. Needing to be at work the next day, without fail, Matthew had taken the train back into the city after dinner. His body clock, which had barely adjusted to Greek time, had not yet reset for New York, and exhaustion, combined with travel and emotional stress, had kicked him into a strange, nearly surreal state. His eyes drooped, but his heart hammered. A certain color, or the shape of a face, would leap out at him from the blurry details of a crowd. He needed sleep badly.

A bunch of kids with an angry boom box shuffled down the steps, posing and cursing in their droopy jeans and baseball caps, displaying all the artificial, late-night animation of intoxicated young men. Matthew moved away from them. From far down the tunnel came the sound of the number six train.

You must cure yourself.

He almost felt he had. Those haunting eyes, that layered mystery, had been left somewhere behind, in some dream life he’d briefly passed through. The icon was not in Greece, he knew, yet he felt he had left it back there. It was part of that culture; its beauty and otherness had no place in this city without history. Past and present fused in Salonika. The past was crushed by New York, even the personal past, his own past. It was lost, left somewhere on a baggage carousel. It had never happened to him. Such magic did not exist.

His mind whirling, he sat down on a wooden bench to still himself. These were fatigue thoughts, delusional riffs from a traumatized brain. He could not get his hands around them. He was trying to free himself from an emotional condition by force of will, and in this delicate and overreceptive state of mind he almost believed he had succeeded. But it was white noise, sound and fury, meaningless. It would all be clearer in the morning.

He glanced up, and a huge figure loomed over him.

“Jesus knows your sins. You can’t lie to him.”

Matthew flinched, knocking his bruised spine against the bench. Mad, bloodshot eyes stared through him and body stink stunned his senses. The mutterer had become a shouter.

“I’m sure you’re right.”

“Your Father knows when you’re lying. He sees into your heart.”

A roar filled the station now, the uptown local hurtling out of the tunnel. There was no getting past the homeless evangelist in any conventional way, so Matthew swung his feet over the low bench back, and staggered across the gum-sticky platform to the yellow line. Reflected light climbed the broken white wall tiles, then the square front of the train rushed by him. The preacher’s voice bellowed from behind.

“He has spoken to me of you. You are one of the lost ones. Your sins are deep, but in Jesus all things are possible. Repent, and be one with the Lord.”

Several silver cars swept by, scratched windows, fluorescent light, very few people in the orange seats. The train slowed and Matthew’s eyes locked with those of a figure, or maybe a face only in a door window, quickly gone. Wide eyes of the deepest brown, alarmed or saddened, half the face discolored. There and gone in a moment, but Matthew’s body was electrified to his fingertips. He had seen that face before, those eyes. In a dream, perhaps.

The train stopped and a door opened before him. He stepped through but did not sit, looking back at the platform. The homeless giant was still by the bench, no longer looking at Matthew, muttering once more. Somehow his familiar insanity seemed less threatening than the face in the window, and Matthew had nearly decided to step off again when the doors closed and the train lurched forward. He grabbed a pole to avoid falling.

There was nobody in the car, and there were only two old women in the one ahead. Matthew held the steel pole fiercely, gazing down a vanishing series of windows in the doors connecting the cars, waiting for the specter to reappear. Or some new threat. He regretted all of it now-every incident and decision that had drawn him deeper into this bloodstained chase and further from his dull, comfortable life. Let him go back to worrying about staff politics, or some troubled girlfriend. He could not take this enervating obsession, this fear, this miserable paranoia. Nothing had happened. He had, perhaps, seen a face. He had been harassed by a homeless man. So what? Every encounter had become heavy with hidden meaning.

A few others got off with him at Seventy-seventh Street. Matthew rushed up the stairs and into the streetlit night as if pursued by demons. Lexington Avenue, lined with florists, coffee shops, and copiers, was dead at one o’clock in the morning. A banging grate beneath his feet startled him; a cab turning onto Eightieth Street nearly ran him down. The empty side streets were worse. It had been a warm day, but he felt chilled. Perhaps he was sick. Restaurants and twenty-four-hour delis created more human traffic on Second Avenue, and he relaxed somewhat. Entering his building, he dropped his keys on the black-and-white tiles, picked them up quickly and dropped them again, cursing loudly in the echoing stairwell. Waking the neighbors, if any of them were home. He barely knew the other people in the building. There was no one here he would go to for help.

Two flights up, he turned both locks and stepped into his cramped kitchen. It took him several seconds to realize that something was wrong. There were lights on. Then he heard movement somewhere, the quietest shuffle of feet, a creaking floorboard. He was looking about for something to use as a weapon when she called to him.

“Matthew.”

Ana appeared in the bedroom doorway, looking the way he felt. Her hair was wild, dark shadows hung under her eyes, her clothes appeared slept in. He thought she looked beautiful.

“How did you get in?”

“Benny let me in.”

“Benny.”

“Ezraki. Don’t tell me that you don’t know Benny.”

The name came back to him. An Israeli friend of his grandfather, did marketing research or something. Ex-Mossad, as if any of them were really ex-anything.

“Yeah, I know him. But I never gave him my keys.”

“He’s got this big set of skeleton keys, says he can open eighty percent of the ordinary locks in the city.”

“That’s comforting. Why did he bring you here?”

“I got myself into some trouble.” She tried to sound flip, but her voice broke. “He didn’t think I should go back to my place right away.”

Matthew turned swiftly to bolt the useless locks, and turned back just as she rushed into him, knocking her forehead against his chin.

“Sorry.”

“It’s OK.”

He held her for several minutes, arms wrapped tightly, fingers digging into her ribs. Strange to feel such comfort, to be able to give such comfort in the midst of such distress. He had not expected to hold her again. His mind had been packed with all the explanations, justifications, pleas with which he might win back her trust, all of them insufficient and unconvincing even to his own ears. Yet here she was. No explanations, no excuses. Warm breath on his neck, the aloe scent of her shampoo.

“I feel so stupid,” she said into his collar. “And frightened.”

“Tell me what happened.”

She released him slowly, sat down at the little kitchen table. He boiled water for tea they would not drink while she told him of Rosenthal, del Carros, and the encounter at the cathedral. By the time he told her of his misadventures in Greece it was three o’clock in the morning. He held her hands across the table, shaking from fatigue.

“I can’t believe you went hunting for that guy after the speech you gave me last week.”

“I assumed he was just some old collector,” she answered. “It didn’t seem dangerous. I thought I might learn a few things.”

“You did that, all right,” he laughed.

“Well, I was told some things, anyway. You have to consider the source. Then I had to open my big mouth, pretend to know secrets. I wonder if they’ll come looking for me.”

“I doubt it. Now that they know people are protecting you.”

“Maybe they believe I know where the icon is.”

“What does Benny think?”

“What you said. They were willing to grab me while they had the chance, but they won’t try again. They just want the icon. I can’t get that fucking thing out of my life even when I give it away.”

That’s because you let me into your life, he almost answered, but thought better of it. They were silent for some moments.

“So they’re gone, right?” Ana spoke again. “The icon, and your godfather.”

“It looks that way. Actually, I have a wild guess where he is.”

“Really, where? No, don’t tell me.”

“I have no intention of telling you. In fact, I’m trying hard to let all this go.”

She squeezed his hands firmly.

“That’s exactly what we need to do.”

“I’m so tired.”

“You should sleep. I can go now.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m sure it’s safe. You need time to get your head together.”

“You’re not going anywhere. You are not leaving my sight.”

“OK.” She smiled at him. “But I’m not sure I can sleep. I’m afraid I’ll have nightmares of people chasing me.”

“I felt like someone was chasing me tonight.”

“When?”

“Earlier. In the subway, all the way home. Don’t worry, it wasn’t anyone. Just paranoia, but it really felt like someone, or something, was after me.”

“This thing is eating you alive. Please tell me you’ll let it go.”

“I will,” he said, in a tone that sounded convincing even to himself. “I have to, I’m not cut out for this.”

She came around the table and held him again. “Promise me.”

“I promise myself. I want out.” He closed his eyes. “I just pray that they leave us alone.”

“It could have been him. It could very well have been him.”

They had retreated from the coffee shop to the car so that Benny could smoke. In any case, it afforded a better view of Matthew’s street. Neither the boy nor Ana had emerged yet, which Andreas took as a likely sign of reconciliation.

“But you can’t be sure,” said Andreas.

“How can I be sure?” Benny slammed his door and lit up immediately. A heavy white bandage covered his left forearm and made some actions clumsy. “I’ve never seen him, just photographs. All old men look alike.”

“So what makes you think it might be him?”

“The face was close enough. And he would have someone like that Dutchman around him. Why does a simple collector need someone like that?”

“He is no simple collector. A dangerous man, certainly. That doesn’t mean he’s Müller.”

“The Kessler woman thinks he is.”

“What are her reasons?”

“Female intuition? I don’t know; she was too shaken for me to debrief her properly. But apparently he admitted seeing the icon years before. More than seeing it. She had the impression that he had spent time with it, maybe owned it. Then, when he was about to get rid of her, she accused him of stealing it. Just to get a reaction.”

“Which she did, it would seem.”

“Oh, yes. His interest in continuing the conversation grew immeasurably after that. He managed to frighten her out of her wits. I can only assume that she had done the same to him, somehow.”

“I didn’t realize she even knew Müller existed.”

“She may not, by name, anyway. But she isn’t stupid, she’s heard rumors. Her grandfather got the icon as loot from a Nazi officer. She doesn’t have to know his name to guess that this might be the guy.”

“Of course. Damned foolish of her to taunt him with that.”

“She didn’t know what she was dealing with.”

“It’s good you were there.”

“It’s good that you put me on to watching her. Now we may have Müller in our sights again. Then all of us doubters will owe you an apology.” Benny shook his head in a bemused fashion, sucking on his cigarette. There was a look in the big man’s dark eyes that made Andreas uncomfortable.

“You would have executed him,” Andreas stated, more than asked. “Right there in the church. If you could have been sure it was Müller.”

“What should I care for churches? That place is more like a museum, anyway.”

“So the answer is yes.”

“If I could have been certain, why not? It would have been risky. I would have had to take out the Dutchman as well, and there were a lot of people around. Then again, how many opportunities can one expect?”

“This recklessness of yours is disturbing. You make me question involving you.”

“What recklessness?” Benny barked smoke into the old man’s face. “It’s all been talk so far. Raiding empty rooms. Bad information. The only reckless thing I’ve done is get that girl out of danger.”

“Forgive me, you did well there. It is only that I take you at your word, and your words have been disturbing.”

“I don’t know why. We both know the man needs to die. Anyway, it doesn’t matter, because I lost him and who the hell knows if we’ll ever find him again.”

“You didn’t lose him, you took care of Ms. Kessler. That was the correct thing to do. Now you are wounded, and I can be of little help in a fight. And he has this bodyguard. The business has become too dangerous.”

Benny stared at him for several seconds.

“You’re saying we should give up.”

“Turn it over to the authorities. It’s what I was telling Matthew. The odds are not in our favor, and the goal is insufficient to the risk.”

“The goals are different for each of us. Your boy is an innocent, chasing a painting that will only bring him grief whether he finds it or not. You are right to tell him to stay out of it. Our goal is much simpler.”

“Your goal.”

“My goal, then. Simple, direct, well justified, and I am capable of carrying it out.”

“Yet your arm is bandaged, and we still do not know if we are even chasing the right man.”

“Damn you,” Benny said, mashing out the cigarette in the filthy ashtray. “We’ve just been through this. I got cut doing what you asked me to do. It would have been much easier just to eliminate those two.”

“It won’t be easy the next time. They will know you now.”

“Are you trying to convince me or yourself? Finding Müller was your idea. Now we are close and you want to give it up. What the hell have you been after all this time?”

There must be something in his face, Andreas decided, that kept inviting the question. And no matter how many times he recounted the arc of this journey in his own mind, it yielded no obvious answer. The dream of confronting Müller had lived within him for more than fifty years. It lived still, an unconscious reflex, like breathing. Yet something had changed. There were times when he could recall his brother Mikalis, the child Mikalis, so clearly that it was as if he had just seen him days before, scampering across the square toward him: round, dark eyes; stick-figure arms and legs; tousled hair; a small scar on his forehead from an errant rock thrown by Andreas himself. The fiery Mikalis from the war years, however, the young man martyred in the church, had achieved the murky indistinctiveness of myth. The same was true for all of them. Stefano, Glykeria, brave Giorgios, poor unfortunate Kosta-all the dead had become vague memories. The events remained etched firmly in his mind, and he knew they were real, but the players had become ghosts, as if such courage, treachery, grief could never have been the stuff of true lives. Even that hardened killer Captain Elias seemed insubstantial, a role he had once played and then put away. Which was more or less the case.

What was real to him now was his son’s illness-ravaged body, his grandson’s dangerous predicament. The young, ruthless Fotis was a shadow; the old, scheming Fotis-kind, cantankerous, desperate for life-was the man he contended with now. It was hard to keep the desire for revenge hot for decades. Who knew when a word, a scent, would transport him back to those bad days? It still happened, but less frequently, and more of his time and energy went to the living, as was only right. He wanted to protect each of these people from harm, from the past, and from each other, and it seemed an impossible but worthy task, sufficient in itself.

“I do not want to see the boy hurt, Benny. And I don’t want you hurt any further.”

“You are not considering that the other side will not let this go, whatever we do. They are still searching. Meeting with the girl shows how reckless they’ve become. She doesn’t know anything, but they were willing to seize her on an innuendo. Who will they try next?”

“They know we are on to them now. They will be more careful.”

“Don’t depend on it. These old men do not behave logically about this painting.”

It was true, of course. With death so near, they felt they had nothing to lose, and immortality, real or spiritual, to gain. They were capable of anything.

“Then we must be on guard. And seek further protection from the police.”

“Our best defense is to hunt down the threat ourselves.”

“My friend,” Andreas spoke gently, unsure for a moment what he wanted to say. “Do you have anyone you are close to now? A wife, a lover?”

“What the hell does that have to do with anything?”

“Where is your son?”

“In Israel. With his mother. Like good Jews should be.”

“Why aren’t you with them?”

“We’re divorced, years ago. You knew that. Anyway, I can’t live in that country anymore. It’s all factions and I’m still considered an unstable fellow. I can’t even bear to visit.”

“Does the boy come here?”

“Yes. Sometimes he sees me and sometimes he doesn’t. What are you getting at, Spyridis? That I need love?”

“A man’s family steadies him. Risks are considered in proportion to what might be lost. A man who feels he has nothing to lose is a strong weapon, but a dangerous one. I was feeling that way when I came to you two weeks ago. I no longer do.”

They were quiet for a time while Benny smoked a third Gauloise. Andreas regretted the personal questions, the lecturing tone. Benny was too old to be treated that way. The mood had come upon the old man without warning.

“What do we do with these two?” the big man asked, pointing his chin down the street toward Matthew’s apartment. “I can’t keep playing bodyguard, I’ve got better things to do.”

“Ms. Kessler should report yesterday’s incident. It might gain her some protection. The police might even be able to find del Carros.”

“Why? He didn’t actually do anything. His man cut me when I stuck a gun in his ribs.”

“We can ask her to leave your name out of the report, if that is what bothers you.”

“It’s nothing to me. I’m a licensed investigator, the gun is registered. But it may look bad for all of you. Why is the girl talking to buyers after she has sold the piece? Why is a suspect’s grandfather putting an investigator on his girlfriend? Anyway, I wouldn’t count on police protection. They’re very stingy about handing that out.”

“Matthew can go to my son’s house for a while. The woman can go with him, if she likes. They should be safer out there.”

“Will you call your man back? Morrison.”

“Yes. It was too late last night when I got the message. I will call him this morning.”

“And you will tell me if he has discovered anything of interest?”

“Perhaps.”

Benny exhaled furiously.

“Don’t play with me, Spyridis, or I’ll wash my hands of you.”

“That would be tragic.”

21

This time it was Morrison who wanted to meet. Andreas joined him at the corner of Fiftieth Street and Fifth Avenue, beneath the looming facade of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and they walked east toward Morrison’s next appointment.

“How’s your son?”

“I think he has improved,” Andreas replied. “I cannot explain it.”

“Don’t try. That’s good news.”

“We shall see.”

“And how was your grandson’s trip to Salonika?”

“Robert, please, we have only a few blocks.”

“You think this is chitchat? He’s in deep, my friend. There are two people dead in Greece, and your buddy Dragoumis is AWOL.”

“Are you part of the investigation now?”

“No. Just curious.”

“You are, as they say, covering your ass.”

“You bet I am. I’m the one who gave clearance for your grandson to leave the country. Now it appears that the matter has escalated. You don’t think you owe me some answers?”

“So you have no information for me?”

“I have information. I believe in sharing. I’m a sharing kind of guy. Share with me, Andy.”

Very well, then. Andreas considered what to say.

“Matthew was nowhere near where the incident took place. Someone tried to assassinate Dragoumis in the mountains. At least two were killed, one of them his nephew. The authorities there suspect November 17, which means that no one will be caught. Myself, I am skeptical.”

“Why?”

They stopped at a streetlight on Park Avenue. A tattooed bike messenger zipped down Fiftieth Street, crossed himself, then pedaled furiously into traffic, just ahead of a roaring Brinks truck. Andreas found Morrison’s questions tiresome.

“The nephew was shot by a forty-five, and there was a motorcycle, which all sounds correct for 17. But Dragoumis is too old and obscure a target for them, and it happened too far from Athens.”

“Who do you suspect?”

“Everyone. Fotis has many enemies. Anyway, you are bound to know more than I do, so why not simply tell me?”

“I don’t know that much,” Morrison claimed as they crossed the avenue. “They identified the second man. Serious prison time for everything from extortion to weapons sales. He was so mangled they thought he might be your friend at first. Now they think the hat and cigarettes were a kind of calling card from Dragoumis, letting whoever ordered the hit know that he had gotten the better of them.”

“How did Fotis escape the scene?”

“Not sure. They did find an abandoned car near a small airport in Kozani.”

“He’s back here,” Andreas said with certainty.

“Could be. I assumed he’d go into hiding.”

“He will, but he came back here first. I tell you, Robert, I do not believe that icon ever left New York.”

“You’re right about that.”

“Ah, now we come to your information.”

“The NYPD has been looking into Dragoumis’ employees, especially the one who disappeared after the theft. Anton Marcus, aka, Marchevsky. They picked him up at Kennedy the night before last. False passport, ten thousand in cash on his person. He’s actually a tough cookie, wouldn’t tell them anything. But there’s a guy he used to work for, Vasili Karov, liquor wholesaler, Russian mob. Apparently Dragoumis gets a lot of his boys from Karov, and there is some question whether they ever really leave Karov’s orbit. You following me?”

“I am not yet senile.”

“So anyway, they figure Karov may be mixed up in this. They shook him down once before but got nothing. This time, they tell him that Anton squealed, which is bullshit, but they must have made some good guesses. Two lawyers and eight hours later he cuts a deal, tells them everything. It’s pretty much what you guessed. Dragoumis and Karov cooked it up between them. The other Russian wasn’t supposed to get shot, but no one told him the plan and he put up too much of a fight. The icon gets put aside for Dragoumis. The Russians get three other paintings which they take at the same time. Except that Karov says Dragoumis tricked him, left the wrong painting for him to steal. Anyway, Karov figures that was his excuse to shaft the Greek and sell the switched painting to a new buyer.”

“You don’t believe that.”

“Why would Dragoumis go to the trouble of setting this up just to leave the wrong painting? And why does Karov care, when the painting isn’t his in the deal? He’s making an excuse for double-crossing your pal.”

“What was the name of the new buyer?”

“Del Rios? Something like that. Probably a false name. Cops are looking for him now.”

“Did Karov say how much he paid?”

“A hundred and fifty, I think.”

Not enough. The Russian might be bending the truth, but there was truth there. Del Carros-surely the name Morrison was fumbling for-had been willing to pay Ana Kessler a million and a half. Unless he was a complete fool, Karov would not settle for so little.

“When did this exchange take place?”

“Four days ago.”

Before del Carros cornered Ana. Yet it was obvious from that meeting that he was still hunting for the icon. He had purchased the fake knowing it was fake. Why? To put Fotis off his guard? So Fotis still had the icon, had never parted with it. Andreas felt certain.

They crossed Second Avenue and walked a little way without speaking. The old man understood that now was the time to pass on what he knew about del Carros, and what he guessed about Dragoumis. To let go of these last bits of secret information and be truly done with it. Still, he hesitated. Morrison touched him on the shoulder.

“One more thing. A Felix Martín flew into Newark from Mexico City five days ago. Argentine citizen. Probably means nothing. There must be a hundred guys in Buenos Aires alone with that name, but it is one of the aliases your German used to use. Just thought I’d mention it.”

Andreas said nothing. He had resisted Benny’s words the day before, and even now he wished that he was a man who believed in coincidence. Morrison began walking again, and Andreas fell into step behind him. They emerged onto First Avenue with a brilliant afternoon light striking the white-and-black tower of the UN, and a huge gray freighter moving down the East River.

“There’s a great Greek restaurant just one block up. We’ll go there sometime. So, Andy, you got anything else to tell me? You sure do seem to be thinking hard about something.”

“Trying to put some things together.”

“You let me know if you do. I have to run.”

“Thank you, Robert. I will keep you informed.”

“That would be a first.”

…brought back from the Holy Land by Helena, the mother of Constantine. Upon the robe were stains of sacred blood from the wounds of our Savior as he lay in his mother’s arms, fallen but soon to rise. From the robe, a section was cut bearing these stains, and sealed between two panels of cypress. Upon these Matthias, a monk of the Studium, created the image of the Holy Mother as she appeared to him in a vision, so that all who looked upon it knew this to be her true face. The image was then placed in the church of the Blachernae, above the silver casket which held the robe itself, and there it performed many miracles, especially curing the ill among the family and followers of the Emperor. From that church, the image would be brought forth in time of need and carried in procession around the walls to instill courage in the hearts of the city’s defenders…

When, on that evil day in the year of our Lord 1453, the infidel Turks, by benefit of the weariness of the defenders and the faithlessness of their allies, laid low the great city of Constantinople, the church of the Blachernae was defiled, and the holy objects within it were destroyed. Then it was that a monk named Lazarus risked death to enter the church and take the Holy Mother created by Matthias from its golden frame upon the wall. Protected by the Virgin’s power, Lazarus walked through fire and devastation to leave the fallen city of Constantine and carry the holy image west. Thereafter he was seen throughout the lands of the vanished Empire for many years beyond the normal life of men, preserved by the Virgin above for the protection of the Living Presence below, and wherever he passed, the sick were healed, and the troubled in spirit were made calm. Some say he went to Thessalonica, and some say to Ioannina in Epiros, but to this day no one knows for sure what was the fate of Holy Mother.

Ioannes folded the pages carefully and placed them in the envelope. They would open the way for him, he had to believe. In the beginning was the word. In what direction these words of Theodoros would push the boy, he could not guess, but something must be attempted. One voice had now separated itself from the rest, and it had become more and more adamant about the need for decisive action. He had decided to surrender to that voice.

After studying the map, he took the PATH train in from New Jersey, became lost in the bright tunnels and plazas beneath Penn Station, but finally found the platform for the number one train, which carried him to Columbus Circle. From there, he walked diagonally through Central Park toward his destination. He got lost here too, on the twisting paths and roadways, but he did not mind so much. The park was alive with growth this early May, faded yellow daffodils, just-blooming red tulips, sweet white and pink apple blossoms, cherry trees, lilac. He had not known the place could be so beautiful. And he understood that he was meant to appreciate it, even now, especially now, in this time of turmoil. It was always this way, moments of great beauty accompanying darkness of the soul. It was a gift not to be despised or ignored, and Ioannes drew breath deeply and smiled at everything around him.

He had dismissed the useless investigator Jimmy, had stopped taking calls from Bishop Makarios. He had even left a call from the secretary of the Holy Synod in Greece unreturned. They had all made a mess of things. All those involved in the matter had been thinking only about themselves-small, mean plans. A bolder vision was required, and Ioannes had some sense of what he must do, though very little sense at all of how to accomplish it. He only knew that the boy was the key.

The broad stairs of the museum were thronged with the usual students, tourists, homeless people, smoking and drinking soda and enjoying the day. Ioannes weaved through them and passed in the central door, through the grand hall of a foyer and over to a little alcove he had spied out on his last visit. The elevator was at the end. A key or card would be required to operate it, and so the priest merely waited by the doors, as if he were precisely where he ought to be. Within ten minutes a woman appeared beside him, trim, middle-aged, with glasses and a name tag hanging about her neck: Carol Voss. She smiled at Ioannes.

“You realize that this is a staff elevator?”

“Yes.” A whole world of corridors and rooms existed behind, beneath, between what the common visitor saw, he knew. As in a cathedral or monastery. The inner sanctum. “I am meeting one of the curators.”

“They’re supposed to come down here and escort you in. Who are you meeting?”

“Matthew Spear.”

“Oh, Matthew’s a friend of mine. We’re in the same department. But I’m sorry to say that he isn’t here today. In fact, I’m not sure exactly when he returns.”

“Really. How unfortunate. You say you are a friend of his?”

“That’s right.”

He had cut himself off from all investigative assistance. He could not hope to find the boy on his own, and must depend now on the greater design. There would be a purpose to whatever happened. The voice spoke quietly but firmly: trust her. Ioannes reached inside his jacket pocket and withdrew the envelope, held it out to her.

“You will give this to him when you see him, please?”

“Um, sure, I don’t see why not.” She took the envelope.

“It is extremely important that he receive it. As soon as possible. And also very important that no one but Matthew should see it. I pray that you understand me.”

She was a quiet soul, like him, and she sensed his urgency in his stillness.

“I promise to keep it private. I don’t know when I’ll see Matthew, though.”

“I am confident that he will return here soon. I place my hopes in that, and in you. Bless you.” He turned and moved away before she could say anything in return, but he had made his impression. She was not the kind of woman to shirk the duty he had placed upon her.

The sky above the avenue had grown strange. Still blue to the south, fierce gray clouds to the north. Ioannes could not tell which way the clouds were moving, or what the evening’s weather held. It did not matter greatly. He would walk in the park once more, extract some sweetness while he still might, before the terrible task beckoned again.

There was something both touchingly intimate and maddeningly claustrophobic about her forced captivity with his family. His father was ill, though less so than she had expected, and still quite handsome, in a harsher way than Matthew. He stayed in his study, reading or sleeping, accepting the occasional visit. The mother had left Ana alone at first, when they arrived the night before, but had been at her all this next day. Trying to feed her every ninety minutes. Asking all sorts of questions about Matthew, as if Ana were a wife or girlfriend of long standing, instead of someone who had met her son only a few weeks before, someone who felt that she might already love him without really knowing him at all.

“She likes you,” Matthew said, when they were alone for a while, his mother shopping, his father asleep.

“Is that why she keeps scowling at me?”

“That’s just her normal expression. She likes talking to you.”

“She’s plying me for information about what’s going on.”

“Don’t worry, she doesn’t really want to know.”

“Anyway, what difference does it make if she likes me?”

“None at all, but she does. Trust me.”

“Would I be sitting here in your parents’ kitchen, after everything that’s happened, if I didn’t trust you?”

He put his lips to hers and her body responded immediately, despite their exertions during the last two nights. They barely made it upstairs to the guest room, his old bedroom. There was something vaguely taboo about doing it in the afternoon in his parents’ house, with his father asleep below. She understood very well that there was a good deal of seeking for relief and comfort mixed in with the lust, but it didn’t make the sex any less intense or satisfying.

Matthew fell asleep minutes after they finished, still making up for lost time. Ana waited a little while, watching his chest rise and fall, stroking his arm, and breathing in his scent. Her friend Edith insisted that you could forget about good looks, intelligence, and all the rest; attraction was about scent. Ana wondered if it wasn’t true. Then she crawled from the bed to her travel bag, digging out a box of Marlboros and a lighter. Sitting in the window seat, she pulled up the sash several inches, lit a cigarette, blew smoke into the breezy air and tried to set her mind in order.

What she really needed was a day or two alone, away from everyone, including Matthew, to think all this through. They had promised each other to let the icon go, yet details had nagged at her for days. The name in the diary, del Carros’ hints, his fear of her knowledge, which made him say more then he should. Eight years earlier, during another terrible illness of her grandfather’s, he had raged semiconsciously about being responsible for her father’s death. This was not a new thing, and she had tried to calm him, but he had been inconsolable. It was supposed to be me, he had insisted over and over. As if the death had not been random, but that someone was meant to die. She had chalked it up to guilt and the delusions of fever, but like these later details, it had stayed with her.

What to do about it? She could try to set up another meeting with del Carros, but that would be madness, and he would surely never go for it. She could leave it alone and hope that he would be caught, that the truth would come out some other way. Was she prepared for whatever the truth might be? Would it be better if he just vanished again, if it all remained a mystery?

“What are you doing?” Matthew spoke from the bed. His voice was more alert than she would have expected.

“Oh, just making myself crazy.”

“You’re supposed to leave that to me.”

“I was crazy long before I met you, sweetheart.”

“Why don’t you come back over here?”

Why not, indeed? Yet she sat there several moments longer, finishing the cigarette, wondering now about Matthew and herself, and if whatever was between them could survive beyond the elevated emotions of the current crisis. Would they still care for each other when all the excitement was over, when dull, hum-drum daily life returned? When the icon was well and truly put to rest? Was she really so eager to know? Better to enjoy it while it lasted. She stubbed the butt out on the exterior sill, closed the window, then rose and went to him.

22

The hospital in Queens was not as impressive as the one in Manhattan. Older, dingier, even less well organized, if that was possible. Andreas rode up to the eighth floor in an elevator that vibrated alarmingly underfoot. The tired Jamaican nurse beside him took no notice of it.

His thinking had become confused once more. Morrison’s news echoed in his mind, testing his will. It was easy to tell himself that nothing had changed, that this visit was simply a last convulsion, a necessary act for purging his conscience and satisfying his curiosity. Easy to tell himself, but hard to believe. The important thing was not to involve Benny and Matthew any further. That much he was determined upon.

The gray-green corridor was suffused with the universal smell of institutional sickness. Stale air, urine, cleaning fluid; the memory-scent of a hundred visits to men now dead. Andreas found the room easily enough. There had been a police guard for the first few days, he’d heard, but since the patient had become well enough to question, that had been dispensed with. It was his information they had been protecting, not this life. Nicholas looked up at him as he entered, face thin and pale, dark eyes wide with concern. Andreas understood that the wounded man might still not know what exactly had happened, and that his visit could hardly be welcome.

“Peace, Nicky,” he said in Russian, taking a chair by the bed. The other man shifted under the white sheets, but the IV in his left arm limited his motion. Thick bandaging on his chest was visible beneath the flimsy blue hospital gown. Someone had placed a vase of yellow tulips on the rolling table beside him. A screen pulled halfway across the room separated his bed from the one by the window, where another patient watched a game show on television. Nicholas nodded, but spoke no reply.

“I’m here on my own.” Andreas reverted to English. “I wanted to see how you were doing.”

“I’m alive.” His voice barely above a whisper.

“Yes. My grandson had a hand in that.” Nicholas looked at him blankly. “Matthew. He went to see his godfather that morning, and he found you instead, bleeding on the floor. He held a towel against your wound until the ambulance arrived. Has no one told you?”

“The police asked questions. They didn’t tell me much.”

“No one has visited? No one from Fotis’ operation has checked up on you?”

“Phillip, you know, who runs the restaurant. He’s the only one.”

“Did he bring the flowers?”

“No.” Nicholas smiled just a little. “My girlfriend.”

“Good. I’m happy you are not alone.”

“She’s working now. She’ll come by soon.”

“I won’t stay long.”

Nicholas cleared his throat and shifted again, obviously still in some pain.

“I didn’t know that about Matthew, what he did. I’m grateful.”

“He’s in trouble. Matthew is, with the police. They think he might have had something to do with the robbery.”

“Has he been arrested?”

“No. They have nothing to hold him on. With Fotis gone, though, they may become frustrated and decide that someone else must take the fall.”

“I don’t understand. They’ve already arrested Anton and Karov. My girlfriend told me. Why are they looking for anyone else?”

“Come now, Nicky, we both know there was more to it than that. And the police know it also. Fotis put Karov up to it. They were all in it together, Anton, Karov, Dragoumis. Everyone but you. You were left to take the bullet.”

Nicholas made a sour face and grabbed a fistful of sheet with his right hand.

“Everyone, eh? Why not your grandson, too? Why not you?”

Andreas nodded diplomatically.

“I don’t blame you for suspecting me. You know very well that Fotis and I are at odds. Maybe you think I have some plan. But surely you know better than to suspect Matthew.”

“I don’t know anything. How can I know anything lying here?”

“Do you know who shot you?”

“They were wearing masks. I couldn’t tell.”

“Bravosou!” Andreas laughed derisively. “They try to kill you, and you are still keeping their secrets. That is what you were trained to do, yes? Keep secrets. You’re a good soldier, Nicky. They will say that about you when you’re dead. He was a good soldier, a useful tool. He kept the secrets.”

“Go to hell.”

“At least you’ll have the woman to mourn you.”

“What is any of it to you, anyway?”

“I told you. The boy.”

“Yes, well, your boy was with Dragoumis all the damn time, talking about that icon. So maybe the police are right. Maybe I should tell them so.”

Andreas leaned forward and made his voice quiet. “Fotis used the boy. As he used you, as he has used me a dozen times. It is what he does. You know this. The time is long passed for defending him, you must look to yourself. They have all betrayed you. You are the only friend you have left, unless you choose to trust me, even a little.”

“You think I’m a fool? I am looking out for myself. I don’t care about protecting them, I want to stay alive, that’s all.”

“But your silence is no protection. You did nothing wrong, and they tried to kill you anyway. Now they are on the run. Dragoumis is in hiding. Karov is in custody, and his operation is shut down.”

“Someone will replace him. You don’t know how it works in my neighborhood. If I testify against any of them I won’t be forgiven.”

“I wonder if you are right. Karov has plea-bargained, there is no testimony necessary. And I don’t think anyone would blame you about Anton, after he shot you. But let that go. I’m not asking you to testify against anyone.”

“What, then?”

“Very simple. I want to know what Fotis was up to before you put him on the airplane that morning. Anything you can tell me. You see, not a dangerous question.”

“Talking to you at all may be dangerous.”

“Well, it’s too late to protect against that. It was you who drove him to the airport, yes?”

Nicholas considered him carefully.

“Yes. I drove him everywhere. Anton is a terrible driver.”

“Early in the morning.”

“Before early. It was a seven-thirty flight, we left at four. I’ve told the police this.”

“I’m not with the police, Nicky. Why so early? It’s twenty minutes to Kennedy at that hour.”

“He likes to be early for things.”

“Did he have a lot of luggage? Anything bulky?”

“No, just a small bag and a suitcase.”

Andreas paused, looked carefully at the younger man’s face. Circle back.

“Why so early?”

“I told you.”

“You went somewhere else first. You made another stop before the airport.”

The Russian grew more agitated. Because he could not lie with ease, Nicholas could only choose between withholding information or speaking truth, and he clearly did not like his choices.

“We went into the city first. Into Manhattan.”

“Why did you go there?”

“He has a few apartments. People stay sometimes, or he does business there with people who won’t come to Queens. We stopped by one of those. He needed to drop off something.”

“What?”

“A painting he sold. A big abstract. I helped him wrap it the night before. He was leaving it in the apartment for the buyer to pick up.”

“How big?”

“I don’t know. Big enough to break my back getting it up those stairs. Maybe four or five feet square.”

“And you were with him the whole time? In the apartment?”

“No, he had to make some calls or something, I don’t remember. I went back to the car.”

“I see. Now tell me, where is this apartment?”

As the old man had anticipated, this was the question Nicholas balked at. He did not outright refuse to answer but simply stayed quiet a long time, glancing at the door. Andreas knew that the moment the nurse arrived, or the girlfriend, that would be the end of the conversation.

“Nicky. Matthew wants the icon returned to Greece, to the church. That is all he has been working for. All I want is to help him. He has done you a kindness. These others have left you to die, you owe them nothing. Your silence benefits you nothing. You could be of great help to us. You could do a service to the church. Which will you choose?”

“Damn you,” whispered the wounded man. “You talk like Dragoumis. I don’t believe either of you. For the boy, for Matthew, I will tell you. Twenty-eighth Street, near Third Avenue. The gray building one in from the northwest corner. I don’t remember the number. The third floor, in back.”

“Thank you.”

“Please leave now, Mr. Spyridis. I don’t want you here when the girl comes.”

“Of course. Did you tell the police about the apartment?”

“No.”

“I wonder why not?”

“I don’t know. Something in my head said don’t talk about it.”

“I am grateful, Nicky, and I will keep your trust. Be well, my boy.”

“We should not even be here. We should have left the country yesterday.”

Van Meer’s voice carried the calm, lazy tone he always affected, as if nothing really mattered to him, but the fact that he had repeated the thought twice in the last twenty-four hours underscored his disapproval. Del Carros had no real fear of Jan’s backing out, yet some attempt to mollify him must be made, to ease the younger man’s professional conscience. Jan thought of himself as someone who did things by the book, but del Carros knew him better. The Dutchman throve on chaos, ever since his violent youth in Amsterdam. The professional polish had come later, and it was a thin coat.

“There is no immediate danger.”

“You cannot know that,” Jan insisted, scanning the street through the windshield. “You don’t know their resources. And there is the police to consider as well.”

“They will be looking for del Carros. They will not find me under that name.”

“It was unwise meeting the woman.”

“We’ve discussed that.”

He would be damned if he would take a scolding from Van Meer, but he had also come to feel that the business with the woman had been handled poorly. She knew some things, yes, but not where the icon was, so what the hell did the rest matter? He kept making mistakes with that family, letting his rage at the dead old man who had robbed him cloud his thinking. He had done the same thing with the son, Richard, the girl’s father, when he had come to Caracas in his father’s place. The banker had a good eye and saw right through the scheme: he knew that the icon they offered him was a fake, that the one on his father’s wall was, in fact, genuine. Del Carros had not really intended to fool anyone in the end, wanting only to get the elder Kessler in his clutches. His son replacing him spoiled that, and the conditions set on the meeting made hostage-taking impossible.

In frustration, del Carros had done the same thing then that he had done all these years later with the daughter. Taunt the banker, insult his father, drop hints about the work, failing to either anger him or draw him out; giving him, instead, the knowledge to piece together things that he should never know. After the meeting, del Carros panicked and called in a large favor. At the time it had felt necessary-the banker knew too much-but del Carros could not lie to himself now as he did then. He had, at that moment, temporarily lost hope of getting the icon, and the action was intended solely to punish the elder Kessler. An act of pure cruelty. Bad enough to have wasted life and energy that way. To repeat the same mistakes with the girl two decades later was unforgivable.

“We’ve discussed it twice,” he said again. “She requested the meeting. I could not rule out her knowing something useful.”

“Spear is the key,” Jan insisted. “He is the one who is close to Dragoumis.”

“So where is he?”

“Did you expect me to get on the train and follow them? The woman knows my face, and there is no escape off a train. That’s why I followed this one instead.” He nodded his head at the hotel down the block.

“And you are certain he did not spot you? He is good, you know.”

“If he’s that good, then I can’t be certain. But I do not think he did.”

“And he went out this morning?”

“Yes, for a few hours.”

“Why didn’t you follow him?”

“I was waiting for you to arrive, as agreed.”

“But he is in there now?”

“Unless there is a way into the alley from the kitchen.”

“There may be.”

Jan showed him the most condescending smile possible.

“You would have me be everywhere at once? Perhaps you should overcome your cheapness and hire more men. Or otherwise trust to reason. He has used the main entrance every time. You worry too much about the wrong things.”

With great difficulty, del Carros held his tongue. It was completely unacceptable that he should be spoken to like this, but Jan ignored the niceties of the employer-employee relationship. And the old man could not rule out that his own anxiety was getting the better of him.

“Let’s hope you are correct. He is the last thread we have to follow.”

Paranoia was a common condition for anyone who had been in the game too long, and Andreas was not immune. The man who stepped out of the double-parked vehicle fifty yards behind the spot where Andreas left the taxi may have been nobody. However, paranoia could also save a man’s life, and so the old Greek passed by the doorway he’d meant to enter, and continued around the corner to Third Avenue.

An odd neighborhood. Indian restaurants, cheap diners, at least one obvious welfare hotel. Neither a good nor a bad part of town, but a passing-through kind of place-a good neighborhood to hide in. Andreas crossed the avenue suddenly and glanced behind as he looked south for traffic. The man from the car had also turned north on Third, but he continued on his way without looking back.

Andreas went down Twenty-ninth Street to Second Avenue as the light grew lower and paler, wasting time, but wanting to be certain. The fact that he was more vulnerable than usual-no Benny and no gun-fed his suspicion. The best thing would be to return to his hotel, but time seemed precious, and he had come all the way down here. He didn’t want to be defeated by irrational fear. Find it, Alekos had commanded him, get it out of Matthew’s life. Turning on Twenty-seventh Street, he headed back to Third, walked the block north, and crossed Twenty-eighth to the gray building he’d passed earlier. The double-parked car was gone. Andreas had still not made up his mind on a course of action when a man emerged from the building in question: squat, heavily whiskered, and sucking hard on a cigarette. When he tossed the butt aside and began shoving the plastic trash barrels into line, Andreas took it as a sign, and knew he had his man.

“Excuse me, sir.”

“What?” The unappealing fellow was immediately suspicious.

“I need to look at an apartment here.”

“No apartments. Everything is rented.”

“I understand. I need to look at one of the rented apartments. As part of an investigation.”

The man pulled himself up straight, but this accomplished little.

“Yeah? And who the hell are you?”

Andreas realized that a police officer would have shown a badge at once. Still, the man seemed movable, if he could find the lever.

“The third floor, apartment in the rear. The one who rents it is a countryman of mine.” Andreas reached into his coat for his old Foreign Service ID. It was an impressive item, small as a passport with gold-embossed leather and an official stamp next to his ten-year-old photograph. He gave the surly superindendent several moments to scrutinize it, trusting that the man could not read Greek. “Fotis Dragoumis. He is being investigated by my government.”

“What do I care? We’re not in your country. Here you need a warrant, from a judge.”

“We are obtaining one. It is a slow process in this city. I would rather move more swiftly. It is very important.”

“To you. Not to me.” The man pursed his fat lips, then lit another cigarette. “Come back when you have a warrant.” He blew smoke in Andreas’ direction and turned to his work.

“I may lose an opportunity by waiting. You may lose an opportunity also.”

“For what?”

“For profit.”

The words had an immediate effect, and the super shuffled his barrels distractedly.

“What profit?”

“Do you want to discuss this out here?”

They retreated into the vestibule, though the bulky super would not open the inside door. Andreas was acutely aware of his exposed back facing the big glass pane of the outer door as he slipped his wallet from his coat. He slid out five twenty-dollar bills, then hesitated.

“You do have keys?”

The man shrugged.

“Yes? No?” Andreas’ voice became sharp.

“I’m not supposed to, but these damn absentee tenants. You have to check a leak, you have to be able to get in, you know?”

“I know.” Andreas handed over the money. The super stared at the tiled floor for too long. The old man slid five more twenties out.

“You’re not taking anything,” the stocky fellow insisted.

“You’re just looking, right?”

“That is correct.” If he found anything worth taking, he would worry about it then.

The apartment was small. Only two rooms, the second a bedroom with a chipped bureau and a narrow bed that clearly got no use. The larger room had a good-sized painting on each wall, a landscape and three abstracts. A large, narrow cardboard packing case leaned against the small sofa, one end open and bubble wrap spilling out. It cost Andreas another fifty dollars to persuade the super to wait in the corridor. Then he went immediately to the open container. Inside was a green-and-blue abstract painting, as big as the box and still wrapped. Reaching his arm in as far as it would go, Andreas felt around behind the canvas, where the frame would have provided more than sufficient depth to hide a smallish, flat object. Nothing. Yet a great deal of the bubble wrap seemed to have been pulled out. Had the Snake retrieved the icon in the last day or so? Had he trusted it to be safe for a week before that, sitting in a packing crate in the middle of the room? Knowing, as he must, that the super was not trustworthy? It did not seem like Fotis.

Andreas turned a tight circle in the middle of the room, surveying walls, floor, ceiling in the dying light from the narrow, dust-streaked windows. What else? He explored the small closet containing nothing but wire hangers, testing its walls and floors for hidden panels. He slid painfully to his knees to search beneath the sofa, pulled up the cushions, opened all the cabinets in the tiny kitchenette, feeling more foolish by the moment. The super would expel him in a few minutes. Something was amiss here, something was slightly off, and it would come to him if he had enough time. Chair, coffee table, sofa, closet, paintings.

Paintings. The landscape did not go with the abstracts. That was nothing, Fotis collected both. It was smaller than the other paintings. Smaller, but with a large, deep frame that raised it a few inches from the wall. He stepped onto the sofa, balancing carefully on a spongy cushion, and lifted the painting from its hanger. Then stepped down and flipped it. He had been so certain of success that the empty space in the frame confused him. It was precisely the right size. He could even detect spots where the inside wooden frame had been rubbed against something. It had been here. Or something had been, and what else but the icon?

Andreas rehung the landscape. Tiredness took him and he sat down. He almost felt he could sleep; just put his head back on the striped cushions and fade into oblivion. Another one of Fotis’ abandoned items. Once more, too slow. He would never catch the Snake.

The super spoke to someone in the corridor, and Andreas struggled to his feet again. Quickly, he lifted each of the other canvases a few inches from its perch, just far enough to see that there was nothing behind it, then moved toward the door. It occurred to him at the last moment that he should have defied the super’s instructions and turned the locks.

A youngish, blond man wearing a leather jacket and tinted spectacles entered the apartment, smiling. The same man who had seemed to be following him earlier. And quite likely, Andreas intuited with resigned dread, the Dutchman who had slashed Benny. There was no way out of the place but through him, and the man would be quick.

“Mr. Spyridis, sorry we are late. You have probably examined the place already, but I need to beg your indulgence while we do so again. Turn around, please.”

Andreas easily batted away the hand that reached for his shoulder, but he was too slow to stop the fist that struck his stomach. Not a hard punch, or he would have ended up on the floor, gaping like a caught fish. In fact, the gentleness of the blow was almost an insult, customized as it was for an old man, yet sufficient to send Andreas to his knees, gasping softly. Black patches danced before his eyes while the other man’s expert hands searched him for weapons, finding none.

“We are very confident, I see,” the blond assailant murmured, standing up straight. He pulled Andreas gently to his feet. “Listen, please. It will take nothing for me to harm you. And I know your qualities, so I will be prepared for whatever you do. Sit here and catch your breath.”

It took several moments after he sat down for Andreas to notice that someone else had entered the apartment. A man older than himself, in a heavy coat like his own. Thin lips and protruding blue eyes. It was at moments like this that time became compressed, years fell away like dead skin, age was no more than the wrinkled casings that covered the young men they had been, and in some ways still were. It didn’t matter that he had seen this man only three or four times up close, fifty-six years before. Andreas recognized Müller instantly. The old German stared back at him, expressionless.

“Del Carros,” Andreas said for no reason.

“If you prefer,” the other man responded, in a voice different from the one remembered, in an accent warped by time and travel. “I hope Jan was not too rough with you.”

Andreas thought of saying something snide, but shortness of breath prevented him. He knew that fear would come next, once he got over the shock, but hoped to maintain a clear head and an attitude of calm. He understood that the Dutchman could hurt him easily, and would probably do so eventually. Andreas was afraid, not of the pain, but of shaming himself. Silence was his friend now. He must neither provoke nor cajole, but bide his time and hope for an opportunity.

Jan conducted his search swiftly, hitting all the same spots Andreas already had checked, begging his pardon as he stepped next to him to remove the landscape from the wall. He and Müller then examined the interior frame for a minute or two.

“It was here,” the German said, looking up at Andreas. “I wonder where it is now.”

Their two expectant faces irritated him unreasonably.

“What the hell would I be doing here if I knew that?”

The German nodded agreeably.

“I thought you might be in it together, you and Dragoumis, but now I see differently. He has betrayed you again, yes?”

The fool saw nothing, Andreas realized, but good, let him pursue that line of thinking.

“Still,” Müller continued, “you must know him better than anyone. You can probably guess what his next step will be, where he is now.”

Andreas shook his head noncommittally. Müller would think whatever he wanted, and whatever he thought might be put to use. Müller. Incredible that he now stood before him. Unreal somehow.

“And if not you,” the German went on, “then perhaps your grandson. Maybe he is the one who knows. Maybe he and the girlfriend have kept some secrets from you. What do you think? Still nothing to say? Why do I believe that the three of you together could connect all the pieces?”

Careful now, thought Andreas. This was just the terrain he feared treading on. Show nothing. Jan whispered some words.

“Yes,” Müller agreed. “Time to go. Nothing more we can accomplish here. You will come with us, Captain. We’ll give you a little time to decide how you can best assist us.”

There was nothing to do but go. At least he would have the advantage of knowing where they were. The Dutchman helped him to his feet once more, then took up position behind him. Müller started out the door first.

“Look out for that superintendent,” said Andreas. “He’s a thief.”

Jan laughed.

23

We need to talk, Mr. Spear. Matthew. There can be no further delay.”

Ana had argued strenuously against his going into the city. Even his parents, who were mostly ignorant of what was happening, tried to forbid him. Yet his work wouldn’t wait forever. His department chief, Nevins, had shown enormous patience with Matthew’s continual absences, but the senior legal counsel wanted a meeting about the icon business, from which a probation or suspension could easily follow. He promised Ana that he would go straight from the train to the museum, stay out of sight, and return as soon as possible. After he read the pages that Carol had left in an envelope on his desk, however, his mind could not focus on his work, and the odd looks and probing questions of colleagues finally drove him out of his office and into the relative quiet of the Islamic wing. There, before the blue brilliance of the wall-sized mihrab from Iran, the priest found him.

“Father John.”

“Ioannes, please. You told me you were Greek.”

The light reflected off a thousand turquoise tiles gave the man a sickly pallor. There was no smile this time, only intense concern, and a brave attempt to restrain it.

“That’s right, I did,” Matthew confessed. “I wonder why. I’m American, of course. Someone told you to find me here?”

“One of your associates. Don’t be upset, people will tell a priest anything. Apparently you come to this room often. I can see why; it’s quite beautiful.”

“And quiet. I’m sorry the Byzantine rooms aren’t finished yet. Meantime, I slip over borders and religions.”

“The Orthodox and Muslims have much in common. Only a fool would deny it. Did you read the material I left you?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“I’ve removed myself from the situation. It’s too dangerous for amateurs. People have been hurt.”

“People have been killed. More will be.”

“Perhaps, but I can’t do anything about that. I only risk becoming one of them. You too, Father. These guys don’t care who they hurt. Priests have died before.”

“I’m not concerned with that. And I do not ask you to put yourself in danger, only talk to me. Do you know where your godfather is now?”

“No.”

Ioannes regarded him for several long seconds. Despite the literal truth of his reply, Matthew felt uneasy in the priest’s gaze.

“You have no idea?”

“Look. What is it that you think you can do? Do you think you can keep it safe? Do you think you can get it back to Greece without being intercepted? Do you think your corrupt church can really protect it?”

The calm face registered no offense at the hard words.

“I am uncertain about the answers to those questions, but my fears are similar to your own. That is why I feel a more permanent solution is necessary. Shall we go on discussing this here, or find a more private place?”

Matthew looked around, seeing nothing. Something in the priest’s words had gotten to him, and he knew that they must go on with this. Where? What coffee shop would be quiet enough and private enough? What place was safe any longer?

“I need to do a few things. Then we’ll go talk.”

Matthew spent another half hour finishing an acquisitions memo and reviewing the growing mountain of reports and phone calls he would have to return to another day. The cardboard model of the new Byzantine rooms sat on a table just outside the door of his cramped, airless office, and he stared at it a moment as he passed. The proudest achievement of his time here; work was already proceeding in the chambers beside and directly below the great staircase. He could not bring himself to care about any of it. He could not even fake it anymore. Nevins gave him a sour look as he left. Surely they would fire him.

Father John wandered the great expanse of the Medieval Hall until Matthew came to collect him. The priest asked no questions as Matthew led him through the busy streets of Yorkville to his apartment. No better location had occurred to the younger man, and he could at least lock himself in and keep the telephone ready at hand. He had memorized Andreas’ and Benny’s numbers.

Surprisingly, the priest accepted a beer, which he sipped slowly from a water glass. Matthew left the shades down and lit a short, fat emergency candle to minimize the light any window-watcher might spy. The effect was more gloomily atmospheric than he would have liked.

“You are convinced, then?” Father Ioannes nodded at the pages spread across the wooden kitchen table. “That it is the same icon.”

“I wouldn’t say I’m convinced. It’s quite possible.”

“And this means nothing to you?”

“It doesn’t change the nature of the work, or what it was intended to do. Heal. Engender faith. I suppose what it does is explain why people who know of its genesis would be willing to kill for it. It’s exceptionally old, and built around an artifact even older and more precious.”

“The swatch of robe.”

“Yes.”

“Soaked in the blood of Christ.”

The quiet awe in the words, spoken by the old priest across a flickering candle, first chilled, then annoyed Matthew.

“If you choose to believe that.”

“Why not believe it?”

“Because there are countless claims of such things, pieces of the true cross, finger bones of saints, the crown of thorns, the spear of Longinus.”

“Undoubtedly many are false. And very likely some are true. The icon has power; you have felt that yourself. The power comes from somewhere.”

“Faith,” Matthew insisted, “does it not? The image inspires faith, and the power is granted by God. The image holds no power by itself. Any more than Peter’s skull or Paul’s thumb knuckle. It seems to me you people had a big fight about this a thousand-odd years ago. Iconoclasm. The destruction of images. I’m no supporter, but they had a point, and they forced a distinction. Proskynesis, the kind of veneration you could show an image, versus latreía, the true worship due to God alone. Yes?”

Ioannes put down the beer glass.

“The lesson was not necessary. Your point is understood, but your reasoning is false. Of course an icon is only wood and paint, worthless by itself. You cannot compare that to the blood of the Savior. Not even the bones of a holy man compare. A line is crossed when dealing with the very substance of the Christ himself. There is nothing more precious, nothing more terrible.”

“My mistake. But why believe it’s genuine? There are at least two famous icons associated with the clothing Mary wore, both lost. This one doesn’t seem to match what I’ve read about either, so now we have a third one that nobody knows of?”

“It was known. The fragment of Theodoros I left you. The knowledge was lost.”

“Why does Theodoros the Blind know this story that nobody else does? Why does it not appear in other histories?”

“There are few histories for those times. Very often we must trust a single source.”

“And for that matter, why have I never read that passage before, when I’ve read Theodoros inside out?”

“It does not appear in the standard translations. It was found eighty years ago in a very old manuscript copy, somewhere in central Europe. Vienna, I think. By a man named Müller. He went to Greece a few years later to take the icon, but was unsuccessful. The priest with whom he tried to negotiate became suspicious of his motives and shared his concern with others in the village, including a curious, and larcenous, altar boy. The boy stole the papers from Müller and gave them to the priest, who delivered them to a nearby monastery for safekeeping. Müller’s son, who became a Nazi officer, also had a copy of the pages, or knew their content. Later, he too came to Greece. I think you know that story.”

Matthew nodded. The priest knew everything he did and a good deal more.

“And you read the pages at the monastery.”

“Yes.”

“OK. Let’s assume Theodoros was writing the truth as far as he knew it. This found piece of robe really is in the icon. We still have to trust that what Helena brought back from Jerusalem was the robe of Mary. There’s more than a three-hundred-year lapse. Who has been holding the robe all that time? Who can authenticate it? Who, having held it so long, is willing to surrender it to the mother of a pagan emperor?”

“The Arabs. What do they care for it?”

“Why would they have it?”

“They had the cross, which they did give to her.”

“If you choose to believe that story.”

The candle flickered wildly, and Matthew realized that it was his breathing causing it to do so. Ioannes stared into the darting flame and raised his hands in a gesture of surrender.

“We go in circles. This argument begins to resemble a more basic one. The man of reason demands proof in exchange for his faith. The man of God may believe in reason also, but knows that it will only take him so far, that there will come a stepping-off point into the unknown. He thinks with his mind until he reaches that ineffable place of mystery. Then he thinks with his heart, pushing forward or retreating. You are a man of reason. Good. But tell me, when you stood before that image, when you touched that wood, did you not feel a special power? Speak the truth.”

Matthew had nearly suppressed the mesmerizing experience of being before the panel. There was art to it-the sad eyes, the dusky shadows-but with the image as damaged as it was, artistry alone could not explain his response. And he had known nothing of the robe or the history when he first encountered the work.

“I felt something. It’s difficult to describe, or to say what it means.”

“You need not try. I have felt it also.”

“You’ve seen the icon.”

“Yes, I know it very well.”

“How?”

“I grew up in the village where it lived. Just like your Papou, though I was much younger.”

“Then you knew him.”

“I thought I had said as much. Not well, he went to Athens when I was still a boy, and only returned to join the guerrillas after the Germans came. In fact, I don’t ever remember meeting him until the morning he caught my brother and me in the abandoned chapel.”

“Christ,” whispered Matthew, understanding coming at once,

“you’re Kosta’s brother.”

“So you know about that.”

“I know what my grandfather told me.”

“I would like to hear what he said. Please.”

“Your father burned the church and took the icon. Kosta killed Mikalis, the priest, when he tried to intervene. Then your father sent you and your brother to hide in the chapel while he…I don’t know what he intended to do. Make a deal for it, or sell it later when things died down. He told my grandfather where to find you once he realized that my godfather was going to get the truth out of him sooner or later. Assuming Andreas would spare you. Fotis killed your dad. My grandfather tracked you to the chapel, shot your brother, and retrieved the icon.”

The priest was silent as Matthew spoke, his large hands gripping the table edge. It occurred to Matthew that the older man might be hearing some of these things for the first time.

“I don’t know,” Ioannes began slowly, “about everything you say. It was years before I heard the whole story, and then just little pieces from different people. The fire in the church was a mystery. No one knew for certain who started it. Many said the Germans did. Some accused the andartes instead. Your grandfather’s was the name on many people’s lips.”

“The atheist. Of course they would blame him.”

“Yes. I cannot rule out that Andreas speaks true, that my father did do it. I was too young to understand what was happening. I remember firing that big pistol at your grandfather, half praying to kill him and half praying to miss. Kosta told me to stop, but I was only following my father’s instructions. Protect my brother. Ten years old, I could barely hold the gun. Your grandfather was like a ghost. It was said he could vanish at will, and I believe he does have that power. He vanished from that rocky hillside, then suddenly he was coming through the door, bigger than life, an avenging angel. He must have struck me. I don’t remember. I do remember waking up. They were arguing, cursing each other, and Andreas stepped over and shot Kosta in the head. Just shot him.”

“That must have been terrible to see.”

The priest nodded vigorously.

“I had seen the Germans shoot people, people I knew. And I was aware of the communists, the black marketeers, like my father, the collaborators, so I knew that our own people killed one another, but I had never seen that. Watching my brother die was, yes, it was terrible, but strange too. I had been hit on the head and felt sick and dizzy, so I wasn’t sure it was real at first. And then Kosta had been so badly burned, so badly, in the fire. He was in great pain. I don’t know if he would have wanted to live like that. What your grandfather did was merciful, I believe. Maybe even intentionally so. Which did not keep me from hating him for years.”

“It’s amazing that your brother made it to the chapel at all in his condition. You must have half carried him there.” “No, I could not touch him because of the burns. But he leaned upon me with one hand, and carried a long stick, like a staff, in the other. Moaning with every step. What a sight we must have been. Some mad prophet and his disciple, though I don’t believe anyone saw us. And I had the icon tucked under my arm, wrapped carefully. It was a clumsy bundle, and I carried it for hours, but it seemed to possess no weight. It was the lightest burden imaginable. I remember unwrapping it on the little altar table in the chapel, just after I lit the candle, and seeing those eyes, and falling into that space. I felt the strength in it then. Bigger than me by far, almost too great for man to experience. I was awed, frightened even. It was good preparation for what happened next.”

“Andreas brought you to the monastery.”

“Amusing, isn’t it? The atheist was the instrument of my faith. He should have killed me, that would have been the sensible thing. Perhaps it was this bargain with my father that stayed him.”

“Maybe he just couldn’t do it.”

“Yes, that’s what I decided later, when I thought about it. But it is pleasant for me to know that my father bargained for my life. It is difficult to despise one’s father, but more difficult to do otherwise with mine. The icon undid him. He was that altar boy who stole the papers from the elder Müller, and he remembered what was in them. I heard him speak of it to my brother, though the memory did not come back to me until I read the pages myself. He destroyed our family, destroyed himself. This information, that he pleaded for me before he died. It’s a little gift. I thank you for it.”

“And you stayed at the monastery,” Matthew said, with some surprise, and some odd eagerness. “You became a priest, even after all that you saw.”

“What else to do after all that I saw? Go mad or find God. I was still young enough to believe in a higher purpose behind the horror I had witnessed. I had lost my mother the year before, then my father and brother together. My sisters were married and gone, there was nothing for me to return to. My soul was desolate, but my heart and mind were open. I was ready for the Word. I was very fortunate. A few years older and I would have turned to cynicism, cruelty. I would have turned my back on Christ, as your grandfather did, as many young men did during those years. By the time my sister found me in the monastery, two years later, I had no desire to leave. I was home.”

“But you did leave. I don’t know what your position is in the church, but you’re fluent in English, you get sent on sensitive assignments. Not the life of a monk.”

“More a politician, or a spy, yes? I assure you that I am ill-suited to it. I was fortunate also in my mentor. A monastery can be a hard place for a young boy, but the abbot was a kind man, and your grandfather must have told him my tale. There was no other reason he would have taken me in. He saw right away that I was unprepared for the rigors of religious discipline, and taught me slowly. I learned English, a little French. I was even allowed to read some religious philosophy when I was older. The Orthodox have always emphasized asceticism and prayer above learning. My abbot was more cosmopolitan, and must have known that monastic life was merely a stopping-off place for him. Perhaps he sensed that the same would be true for me. Or perhaps I give him too much credit. Maybe he simply needed a protégé, and there I was, clever, and young enough to be molded to his purposes.”

“What happened to him?”

“He is dead now, but first he made his way up the church hierarchy to the Holy Synod itself. I think he hoped for me to replace him there, but I was too much of a dreamer, too little of a politician. Another of his protégés was elevated, and that is the man I now serve.”

“The man who sent you here.”

The priest’s face grew troubled, and he broke eye contact with Matthew.

“He sent me, yes, because I could identify the icon, and because I have had dealings here in the past. But Tomas and your godfather were ahead of us, and more killings followed.”

“More? You mean in addition to those during the war, or have there been others since?”

“I mean throughout its existence,” hissed Ioannes, guttering the flame. “The icon carries death in its wake. We no longer know how to treat an object of such preciousness. The mind-set has been lost. It overwhelms us, possesses us, makes us mad with longing. These many days I have spent searching for it, searching for you, have given me time to think. I do believe that things happen for a reason, even terrible things. I was granted this time to know the teachings of my own spirit. My mission is no longer the one I was sent upon. Voices have spoken to me.”

The awed tone had returned. The priest had two modes-man of the world and wild-eyed believer-and they were beginning to alternate with frightening swiftness. Matthew suddenly wondered if Ioannes was not a little unbalanced.

“What have the voices told you?”

“Many things. They must be interpreted.”

“But you’ve arrived at some answer.”

“Not an absolute one. Anyway, it is not a thing you will wish to hear.”

“Tell me, Father.” But even as he spoke, Matthew realized that he already knew what the priest would say.

“I believe in my heart that this struggle will go on, the killings will go on, as long as the icon exists to tempt the weak. And we are most of us weak creatures. This object was created for another time. It can no longer exist in ours. It is too strong for our modern, godless condition. It must be returned to the power that inspired it.”

“You mean it must be destroyed.”

“Yes.”

They were both quiet while the idea took substance between them, a bridge or a barrier. Matthew wanted to remain reasonable, to assess the priest’s suggestion with cool detachment, but it was impossible. The idea was monstrous, even sacrilegious.

“I think,” he began slowly, “that you’re forgetting all the good associated with the icon, and giving too much credit to a few greedy old men. Do you give no credence to all the miraculous healings reported over the years? And even if that turns out to be just mind over body, don’t we have to respect the object which can inspire that?”

“No doubt healings have occurred. In my youth I saw women cured of their arthritis, and one man cured of his blindness, at a touch. These were mostly poor and doubting souls, always Christ’s favorites, and their contact with the work was brief. Compare this with the few who possessed it for some length of time. Ali Pasha, Müller, Kessler. Covetous souls, who may have lived long lives, but not happy ones. Strife and illness plagued them, they watched their loved ones die young. Then look at all those who tried to possess it, who came to grief somehow. My father and brother are two. Look at the lives it has used up and twisted. Your own godfather. Look what it has begun to do to you.”

“Don’t put me in that group, Father. I’ve been trying to let it all go.”

“And doing admirably, though I wonder if you can succeed. Müller and Dragoumis left the icon alone for years at a time but were always drawn back. I need someone like you, who has tasted the work’s power, to be my ally in this, to understand me. The icon carries death.”

“How can that be so if it carries the blood of Christ?”

“Where is the contradiction?” the priest demanded. “Christ was surrounded by death. Death pursued all his followers but the timid, and many millions have died in his name since then. The promise of Christ is salvation of the soul, not long life on earth.”

Matthew tried to frame a response, but his mind was alive with fear and agitation, and no logical rebuttal would come to him. The priest’s thinking was wrong. Not just wrong but dangerously simplistic, a product, no doubt, of his own brutal experience. Understandable, but somehow he had to set the man straight before Ioannes did something rash.

The telephone rang, startling them both. It seemed to Matthew that it must be late, yet the clock indicated it was not, even if full darkness had fallen outside. The candle had burned down; for short emergencies, clearly. He knew he should simply let the phone keep ringing, but some uncontrollable urge caused him to reach back to the counter and pick it up.

“Yes.”

“Mr. Spear. I am pleased that you are finally at home.” The voice was old and unfamiliar, and Matthew felt at once that he had made a mistake in answering. “We have some time to make up, so I will come to the point. Your grandfather is in our care, and it is necessary for you to speak to me about the icon. I understand that your knowledge of its present location may be imprecise, but I do require that you tell me all you can. Are we clear so far?”

“My grandfather.” What the hell was this? A threat, certainly, but from whom?

“Yes, Andreas is with us. We are getting on famously, but such things seldom last.”

“Listen. Who are you?” No, that was stupid. “Let me speak to Andreas.”

“Of course. Briefly.”

“Paidemou.” The old man’s voice sounded sleepy. “Do nothing. I have explained to these princes that you know nothing, but they are both stubborn fellows. Tell-”

“Well,” the first voice came back on the line, “that was not very constructive, but at least you can be satisfied that he is with us, and healthy. Now, Mr. Spear, I cannot stay on this call for long. Please speak to me.”

“I don’t know what to tell you.” What a mess. They really had the old man. Were these the same people who had gone after Fotis, after Ana? He squeezed the receiver hard. “We should speak in person, shouldn’t we? Someplace public. With my grandfather there.”

“A meeting is an excellent idea, when I am convinced that you have something to share. You must convince me of that first.”

“Why would I tell you anything over the phone? This has to be an exchange, right?”

“That depends upon the value of the information. Do you know where your godfather is now?”

“I have a pretty good guess. I know that’s not enough. Let me check it out and contact you again tomorrow.”

“He is within the greater New York vicinity?”

“If my guess is right. How can I reach you?”

“You cannot. I will telephone you tomorrow.”

“I won’t be here. Let me give you my cell phone number.”

Matthew carefully recited the number, the digits swimming in his panicked brain.

“Very good. I need not mention, but I will, that you must not include the authorities or anyone else in your search. I am sure you understand.”

“Look, my grandfather isn’t really involved in any of this. My godfather and I dragged him into it. You should go easy on him.”

“I have no wish to be hard. Until tomorrow, Mr. Spear.”

Father John gazed at Matthew sympathetically after the younger man hung up the receiver.

“Do you know who it is?”

“No. It could be this del Carros. South American collector, tried to grab Ana Kessler a few days ago. Or it could be someone else.”

“You should contact the police at once.”

“Yes, I should. But he made it clear they would hurt Andreas if I did.”

“They may do that anyway.”

“I know. I have to try something. I have to go speak to someone.” He struggled to assemble a map in his mind, the roads of northern Westchester, that day trip with Robin to find Fotis’ house. The Snake’s denial of purchasing the property he had coveted for so many months had not been convincing, even that day in the park; and alone in his Salonika hotel room weeks later, Matthew had guessed what the denial was all about. But could he find the house again, without Robin’s assistance? Not in the dark, but first thing in the morning he must try.

“Let me help you,” said the priest earnestly.

Matthew gave him a hard look.

“What, the kind of help you were just talking about? I can live without that, Father.”

“Who else is there? All that I said before was intended only to convince you of what I believe. I will not force your hand. I want us to be allies.”

Matthew exhaled. God knew, he needed friends. Ana had to be kept out of it. He would want Benny with him when he went up against del Carros, but Benny would be only a liability in speaking to Fotis. So he was down to the mad priest. Somehow, it seemed appropriate.

24

Steam heat clamoring to life awakened him. The room was dark, the shade on the west window half-raised, and orange light had broken across the crowded trees and white stucco mansion on the opposite hillside. For the several long moments required to reach full awareness, Fotis was treated to this warm and placid vision of dawn, budding branches sketched from shadow by the rising sun, the sky shifting from deep lavender to blue, the real or imagined trill of birdsong. Dawn was primal, and he might have been a hundred different places, or a hundred different men. He might have been young.

Then the pain arrived. Radiating from his lower back up the spine to his shoulder blades, and in pulsing waves through the center of his thighs. Acute discomfort returned him to himself, drew his boundaries, and cut him off. The quality of light outside ceased being a display of beauty and became a means of determining that it was six forty-five without consulting the clock on the night table. He pressed his fists into the mattress and pushed himself up to a sitting position. He hadn’t the energy to go further right away, and fishing the square pillow from between his worn knees, he placed it behind his ruined spine and leaned back into the headboard. The pipes banged again, shaking the floor, and the valve on the bedside radiator began to hiss. The heat coming on had confused him. It was not winter but spring, early May. Yet the nights were still quite cool here, and he had set the thermostat up the previous evening. His bones had no tolerance for any cold whatsoever.

At these moments, thinking of the hot shower, the first pills after breakfast, the first drink after lunch made the pain seem bearable. When the time came that he could no longer subdue the agony by such simple means, he knew his days would begin in terror, end in despair. Perhaps it would never come to that. The degeneration had advanced quite slowly up to now. Maybe he would be carried off by something more dramatic before the illness reduced him to a groaning, bedridden ghost. Or perhaps the Mother would save him. He could not see her, but he felt her presence in the room. Yes, he felt her. The same warming, enveloping sensation of well-being that had possessed him when Tomas had arrived with the package nearly two weeks before. The very same feeling that had taken him, body and spirit, that had shaken him to the core sixty years ago, when Andreas had first shown him the work. He had not been the same man since. Certain preoccupations, certain necessities had ruled him from that time forward. Andreas had given him a great gift with that private showing in the empty, candlelit church. Yet in another sense he had troubled Fotis’ spirit, unsettled his life, and the worst part had been that Andreas himself was utterly unmoved by his prize. The icon was a curiosity that he was happy to show his friend, but it meant nothing to him. Such love for his men, and later for his wife and children, but a heart of stone for his God. Andreas. They would never choose each other’s friendship at this late date, but it was no matter; they were helplessly linked.

Fotis woke again with a start. He had sensed someone at the foot of the bed, but no, there was no one. Neither enemy nor friend. He was quite alone in the house, and had to force himself not to think about all the ways in which sick old men could die, alone in a house. Even getting out of bed was dangerous. The shower would be pure peril. Perhaps he should avoid it. The house was warm. He would dress and eat and see what strength he had after that.

It was a slow process. There was no longer anyone to help him. Roula had died before he had lost the strength he might have needed from her. It was too hard to think about her with him now, the years of contentment they might have had. And children, which she had desperately wanted, but God had willed otherwise. The young creature who had followed had been less than useless to him; only beautiful, what was that? She had expected to become his wife, but he had sent her away, grateful for the lesson in vanity, not repeating his mistake. His niece belonged to Alekos, who hated him. The men were more dependable, but he had lost them all. Phillip ran the restaurant and kept his distance, as had been arranged between them. Nicholas was in the hospital, the faithless Anton had run. Now Taki was dead, his sister’s only child. He closed his eyes and tried to close his mind to the grief and guilt that rushed in upon him.

This resistance was critical. If he could not stem the tide of regret at once, the past would break over him in an irresistible wave, and all the dead would swirl about him together. Marko, strangled in an alley, staring bulge-eyed from the mortician’s table; Roula coughing up her last bloody breaths; the young priest, burned and bleeding, writhing at his feet in the dark crypt. All of them with some claim upon him. And he, Fotis, old, broken, fearful as a child, damned, and yet still here. Ninety years of life and fighting for more. Ludicrous. Disgusting. He nearly reeled with bottomless self-loathing as he dropped the sweater with which he had been struggling and sat upon the bed once more.

Look to the Mother. That was the only way out of this. That was what all the pain and trouble had been about. He shifted around on the bed, and there she was. The light was not yet strong enough to strike her directly, but it had suffused the room in a warm orange glow that caught the brighter spots on her surface. The gold upper region and the yellowish parts where paint was missing created a contrast by which the maroon robe, the long brown hands, the enormous eyes came into focus. The eyes held the old man in their hypnotic, forgiving caress, and he could not help feeling that even there, where the paint had held, the painter’s hand did not rule. Artifice had been stripped away, and these portals burned directly out of the heart of the wood. Their black depths sounded in a time before the artist’s brief life, in the deep and sacred soul of the original. She was the first, even before the Son. She was the source, the life. Within the wood lay both. Her garments, his blood, her tears.

There was no way that a man could not be made small before this wonder. Fotis welcomed the smallness, his sins shrinking with the insignificance of his life, the lives he had helped, harmed, ended. Dust. A man had to live a very long time to feel it, to understand the lesson as well as he did now, and there was no teaching it to others. It took the transformative power of a sudden, burning clarity, lent by the Lord to the lucky few. Christ loved sinners. So there was yet hope.

Time lost meaning in the face of such contemplation, but a man was still a man, burdened with needs. Hunger brought the Snake back from the garden to the solitary room, now full of mid-morning light. He had no idea how much time had passed, but he forced himself to his feet, tugged on the gray cardigan, and went downstairs to the kitchen. Only after his coffee and oatmeal did he allow himself to consider his position once more. It was not an enviable one. Between the purchase and bribing Tomas, he had spent nearly everything to get the icon. Keeping it, and finding the means to live, would prove challenging. He had some cash, and disguised accounts in three countries. The house had been bought in Phillip’s name, and he had told no one about it, except the boy, apparently. Why had he told him? A need to share his pleasure with someone? A simple slip of age? The reason did not matter, it was done. He had then told Matthew the purchase was off, and the boy didn’t know precisely where the house was, did he? Troubling to be unsure of such details. In any case, Andreas could take what little Matthew knew and discover the rest. Others would be searching, too, even though Fotis’ return to the country had been in secret. The house could not be considered secure. He had already tarried here three days, regathering his strength. A new short-term location must be found, and a long-term location finally decided upon. Someplace warm. Mexico, perhaps.

Fotis peered out the kitchen window at the narrow wooded dell to the east. He had determined weeks before that it provided the best covert approach to the house and had intended to place motion sensors there, but had not seen to it. There was as yet insufficient foliage to provide real cover, but his eyes were not good any longer, and he could certainly miss a man at this distance. A careful soul could reach the house unseen, but could not enter it unheard.

Between the kitchen and rear stairs was the converted pantry, which served as a security room. The house alarm was controlled from here, and it could be set to produce the terrible clamor typical of such devices, or only a low pinging coupled with a flashing light specifying the location of the break, on a panel in this room and another in the master bedroom. It was the second setting Fotis used while in the house. Why disturb the neighbors? Better to surprise uninvited guests. There were also eight video monitors for cameras placed on the house and about the grounds. Too few, but without someone to constantly monitor them, the whole array was useless anyway. He simply had not counted on losing everyone. The pilot, Captain Herakles, could not be bought for such menial work. The young Peugeot driver might have served but could never be trusted, and now rested beneath the Adriatic. That had cost him triple with Herakles. So many complications.

Just before leaving the room, he saw a movement on the monitor covering the gate. A dark sedan rolled between the big stone pillars and proceeded slowly up the drive. Fotis watched unblinking as the car slipped from the first screen to reappear moments later on the monitor near the front door. It looked to be the same car he’d seen Matthew driving twice before. Who else among those who sought him would be trusting enough to come straight up the driveway? Unless it was a diversion. Scanning all the monitors now, mind utterly clear, Fotis crouched to unlock a short gray filing cabinet and took a pouch from the bottom. Inside was a small black pistol, an old Walther from a friend in MI6. Still operational as of a few months ago, and the right size and weight for his shaky hand. He snapped in a loaded clip and put a second in his cardigan pocket. For the moment, he did not brood over the pointlessness of a fight. He was unlikely to win, and even if he did, he would have to face the authorities. Still, he was a lucky man, and with survival came possibilities. He would fight for his prize.

The screens revealed no other activity. Nothing in the woods. No one on the little hillock behind the house. The car sat silently for a full minute before the driver’s door opened and Matthew stepped out. Damn him, why had he come? Who was in the car with him? Surely not Andreas, who would never allow such a foolish approach. His godson headed for the front door, and Fotis forced down a rising panic. Why Matthew? And then again, who more likely? He desperately did not want to hurt the boy, but who knew what larger game was playing out here? He could simply refuse to answer the door. Would the young man try to force it? Could Fotis let Matthew walk away, having found the place? He fingered the smooth jade beads in his pocket. Instinct spoke. He deactivated the front door alarm. Then, without a plan, he went to face his godson.

The smile on his godfather’s face was a surprise, but Matthew realized that it should not have been. Any reaction contrary to expectation was precisely what should be expected of the Snake. The smile did not disguise the fatigue and worry around the mouth and eyes, the enervating agitation that seemed to bend his whole form. Illness, or the demands of this lousy business, was clearly killing Fotis.

“Excellent, my boy. You must tell me how you found me, but come in, come in.”

What else to do? The priest offered no actual protection, only the illusion of it, and that was better maintained by putting space between them. Matthew knew that Ioannes had no intention of driving away or phoning anyone if things went badly, but Fotis did not. Only after stepping inside did he see the pistol in his godfather’s hand, but there was nothing odd in that. He was a hunted creature, and Matthew had seen too many guns in the past week to be startled.

“Who is in the car?”

“A friend. A priest, actually.”

“He knows what is happening?”

“He knows some of it.”

“He will not come inside?”

“No.”

The old man seemed satisfied with this answer. He shut and locked the door, shuffled toward the staircase, paused, and then started up. The indecision and absence of courtesy were sufficiently out of character to disturb Matthew, but at the same time there was a satisfying sense of seeing behind the mask. He could do nothing but follow, first quietly unlocking the door again. The house resembled many he had seen in the area, a combination of stone and half-timber, slate-roofed and larger than it appeared to be. The interior walls were cream, scattered with bookcases and any number of impressionistic landscapes and religious works that had previously been in Fotis’ storage. The heat was ridiculously high, and Matthew shed his jacket as he climbed.

“I must have been more specific about the location than I remember,” Fotis posited.

“I would think you would be more interested in why I’m here.”

Fotis whirled about at the top of the stairs, his wide-eyed amusement verging on madness. The light from a high window caught an ugly yellow bruise on his left temple.

“Why? Why else? There are no secrets with us. We share the same hunger, only I hope you will see that my need is greater.”

The old man rushed off down the corridor, and Matthew could only yell at his back.

“You’ve got it wrong, Theio. It’s not about that. Listen to me.”

Following, Matthew entered a large bedroom near the back of the house. The blankets were still rumpled on the king-sized bed. Light poured in through three windows. A telephone and an odd console dominated the big oak desk, and his godfather sat in a leather chair in the corner, staring at the mantel. Leaning there, above an unused fireplace, was the icon. It was smaller than Matthew remembered. In fact, it seemed diminished in every way, unworthy of the blood and anguish spent on it. The eyes appeared to recognize this. They had lost their magnetic hold, their promise of mysteries to be revealed in time, and now looked only forlorn. Perversely, Matthew felt this new vision of the work begin to breed in him a feeling of protectiveness nearly as strong as the passion for revelation it had replaced. He became cognizant of the profound effect that the circumstances of his viewings were having upon his reaction. Ana’s presence had provoked a sort of holy lust, his father’s a deep fear and a need for healing. And now this appropriate sadness. Was it for Fotis? Was the painting no more than a conduit?

“She holds you still,” Fotis whispered.

“No,” Matthew answered, but it was not completely true. She held him differently now.

“Understand me, my child. I cannot live much longer. When I am gone she will be yours, but I need her with me if I am to die well. I have no other hope. If you had seen the things I have seen, you would not try to deny me.”

“The things you’ve seen? Or the things you’ve done?”

“Who else knows you’ve come here?”

He would not follow the old man’s lead. That was a tired routine.

“They have Andreas.”

“Who has him?”

“I’m not sure. I think it’s this del Carros. He tried to grab Ana Kessler a few days ago. I’m pretty certain he had a deal with your Russians to get the icon.”

Fotis nodded. “You are sure they have him?”

“I spoke to him.”

“What did he say? Precisely.”

“Not much. I think he was drugged. He told me to do nothing, and he referred to ‘both’ of them, so I assume it’s only two men who have him.”

“Good. That’s all?”

“He called them ‘princes.’ I figured he was being sarcastic.” Fotis’ stare bored into the younger man for many long moments. Matthew knew he was being read, but he remained calm, in the knowledge that he was not hiding anything. “They’re going to call me soon,” he pressed. “They expect information on the icon’s location.”

“Did it not occur to you this could be a trick by your grandfather?”

“What, you think he’s faking being held?”

Fotis nodded, still looking him hard in the face. It was a sure sign of how deeply the paranoia of the last few weeks had penetrated that Matthew seriously weighed the idea in his mind.

“No. You have no idea how badly he wants me out of all this. He would not invent some scheme that sent me after you alone. You must know that.”

“Maybe you’re in it together.”

“That doesn’t make sense, for the same reason. You’re thinking out loud, you don’t even believe what you’re saying.”

“Perhaps.”

“We have to help him.”

“Of course we do.” But there was no heart behind the words. Fotis stared, unblinking, no longer seeing Matthew, but scheming again, stalling for time.

“So what does ‘princes’ mean?”

“The Prince,” Fotis began slowly, “was what your grandfather and I called the German officer I told you about. Or sometimes the Pasha, because he liked to live well, and surround himself with stolen treasures. He is the man Andreas made the deal with, sending the Holy Mother into exile.”

“Müller. The Nazi he was hunting all those years.”

“The same.”

“Del Carros is Müller.”

“It may be so.”

“What did he intend by telling me that?”

“Only that we should know. Or as a warning, perhaps, that we are dealing with someone far more dangerous than I had guessed. He is still a loyal fellow, your grandfather.”

“Yeah, and how will you repay that loyalty?”

“I have not the means to help him. I can barely protect myself.”

“You have the icon. It’s not worth Andreas’ life.”

“His life is forfeit already. You did not tell him, or them, of this place?”

“Of course not.”

“Then there is nothing they can get from him. Do you see? He has used his last opportunity to warn us. If you give them the information now, he still dies, and very likely you and I also. And they take our Lady. He would become the instrument of our deaths. Do you think he wants that? Do you think he wants Müller to have the chance to betray him again? For shame. They only win if they get the icon. We can prevent that. You must assist me.”

“I know someone who can help us. He’s ex-Mossad, a friend of Andreas. We can’t give up on him, we have to try something.”

“You understand nothing.”

Fury shook his godfather’s ill frame, and the hand gripping the pistol bounced on his leg. A dull trilling drew both sets of eyes to the desk, where a red light flashed on the console. Fotis jumped up and shuffled over to it.

“The priest has gotten curious, perhaps? No. Not the front door, the back, the back…”

He wheeled about and pointed the gun at Matthew’s head. The body language was so threatening that Matthew found himself throwing his hands up and recoiling two steps.

“Theio!”

“Who have you led here? Speak the truth.”

“No one. Just the priest.”

Fotis dropped the gun to his side again, speaking more quietly as he marched past Matthew.

“No, you have brought them. Maybe unawares, but they followed you.”

Recovering himself somewhat, Matthew followed the old man out of the room on shaky legs. Fotis turned once to put a finger to his lips, then started along the corridor, not the way they had come but in the opposite direction, turning once onto a shorter corridor. At the top of a steep, narrow staircase he gestured for Matthew to stay put, then started down. In moments, he had vanished around a turn and Matthew stood there, mute and helpless, staring at the place where he had gone. What should he do now? Who was down there? Should he go check on Ioannes? Indecision held him to the spot, and perhaps a minute later he heard a faint noise below. Then Fotis reappeared. The Snake struggled a bit on the ascent, but he gripped Matthew’s shoulder with a strong hand and placed his lips right at the younger man’s ear.

“I hear him but don’t see him. There’s another at the front door now. We’ll hold the second floor against them. Can you use this?”

Fotis held out a large pistol, grip-first. Matthew nodded hesitantly. His godfather slid the carriage back and forth as quietly as possible, chambering the first round, then placed the gun in Matthew’s hand.

“Squeeze the trigger hard. Stay right here and shoot anyone who comes up those stairs.”

He pressed Matthew against the wall, then slipped the Walther from his sweater and headed toward the front of the house. Fear of whatever was about to happen battled with the anger that events had overrun his intentions, but Matthew did not take his eyes from the stairs. He did not wish to distract himself with thinking, but thoughts came unbidden. If it was del Carros or his companion down there, he would need to act without hesitation, as Fotis had instructed. But what if it was someone else? The FBI, or Benny, or even Ioannes? If he waited to identify the person, would he get the chance to react? Could he look some stranger in the eye and pull the trigger?

Or was it all some game that Fotis was playing with him, yet again? He backed up ten feet to the turn in the corridor to make sure the old bastard wasn’t going down the front stairs with the icon. A faint noise from below made him quickly retrace his steps. Then all thought vanished as gunfire erupted from the front of the house.

25

Jan had not liked the plan one bit, but their options were few. They had drugged Spyridis, but he said little and clearly didn’t know where to find Dragoumis. The boy was their best chance. Seizing him would have been the surest course, but Müller gauged the young man’s tone and guessed that he did not precisely know his godfather’s whereabouts. Yet he might find him if given free rein. Jan’s trying to grab the boy and priest together could go terribly wrong, even leave Spear dead, and in any case three hostages would be a very clumsy business for two men. One was bad enough. The best plan was for Van Meer to trail the boy.

The Dutchman was annoyed, the closest he got to being angry. He’d been watching Spear’s apartment on and off for days, and was amazed the boy had been stupid enough to return. Let me take him, he urged Müller, he’s right here. Yet he had gone along in the end, and the trail had proved every bit as challenging as predicted. Müller drove the rental car while Jan followed on foot, and they had to scramble when they realized Spear was borrowing a friend’s car and about to disappear. Jan took the wheel and managed to maintain the tail all the way out of the city, up the Bronx River Parkway, and along the winding back roads of northern Westchester. Jan was good, and the boy was not experienced, but over so great a distance there was a chance he had noticed the pursuit. This meant they might be walking into an ambush.

Müller looked at Spyridis in the backseat, still unconscious from his last injection. He would get another one when the car stopped, and in all probability would not wake up again in this world. The Greek’s wrists were bound with a cord Jan carried for the purpose, and a blanket was thrown over his lap to hide them. Müller returned his eyes to the road, and realized he’d lost sight of Spear’s vehicle.

“Where is he?”

“He just pulled in there, the gate in the brick wall.”

“Then why are we driving past?”

Jan glanced over at him in mild disgust.

“We should go in behind him, you think? Invite ourselves in for drinks?”

They continued past the gate for a hundred yards but saw only trees and wall, then lost sight of the property. Jan turned around and doubled back, passing the gate again until he reached a wooded dell a few hundred yards on the far side, and parked among the weeds. He waved his cell phone, switched to walkie-talkie function, at Müller, then opened his door.

“Give me time to get in. Then you come in the front, as we planned.”

“Yes, yes.”

“About ten minutes should be sufficient. Remember that I may not be able to speak once I’m inside.”

“We’ve been over everything. Just go.”

“Don’t be impatient. We’re too close now.”

No answer was required, and then Jan was gone, melting into the thicket of young oak and maple like a ghost. Müller took a deep breath and slid over to the driver’s seat. He let five minutes elapse on his watch before he put the car in drive, looked for traffic on the empty road, pulled out slowly. Jan was correct-damn him, anyway-there was no need for haste, no need to panic. They were closing the noose. Now was not the time for stupid mistakes.

As he shaped the turn and started up the incline, the brick wall came into view once more, old and moss-covered, and within a hundred feet the stone pillars appeared, bracketing the drive. He pulled over onto the grassy shoulder of the road, slipped out his cell phone, and settled in to wait for Jan’s call, glancing once more at Spyridis. Had he moved, or was it simply the motion of the car? He checked the road, the trees, the wall itself. Then he noticed the tiny camera on the west pillar, pointing straight at him.

Damn it all, he should have seen it before; there must be cameras everywhere. On instinct, he put the car in gear again and pulled into the long gravel driveway. Why give Dragoumis any more time to think? With luck, only the old Greek would oppose them. The cell phone on the seat released a burst of static, indicating that Jan was inside but could not speak. Müller felt his heart beating dangerously and sucked hard at the stale air in the car. He parked at the most oblique angle possible from the windows of the house, then got out and rushed to the front door.

There was no one in Spear’s car, so both he and the priest must be inside. Müller ignored the inevitable camera by the door and tested the large brass knob. It was unlocked. Either Jan had worked swiftly or it was a much too obvious trap. He slipped the pistol from inside his coat and pushed the door open with his free hand. Nothing happened immediately. He could see a handsome blue-and-red oriental carpet at the base of a staircase, and wide arches opening to sunlit rooms on either side of a hall. Müller stepped in quickly and made for the stairs. The first bang startled him, but by the second he was on the ground, rolling to his right, instinct overcoming age. There was at least one distinctive thump of a round striking wood. He bumped into the heavy leg of something and pulled himself to his knees, knocking his head against the bottom of a large dinner table. Through blurred vision he could see that he was in the dining room-out of the line of fire, he guessed.

He checked himself for damage but did not seem to be hit. The shots had come from the top of the stairs. Dragoumis-if that’s who it was-had waited for him to get well inside before firing, but his aim was off badly. The German shook his head as his vision cleared. He had been lucky. Now he was on sore knees with a bruised skull and no way to get up those stairs. Never mind; at least he was inside the house. He glanced across the hall. There was a large, plush living room with light pouring in through French doors over a white sofa, glass table, and thick flokati rug. It reminded him of a room in a house he had once owned, a place where he had been almost content. Don’t think of that now. There was a door at the back of the dining room, next to a tall, glass-fronted hutch. There must be a back stairway in a house like this. He had to find it, and find Jan. Müller stood slowly, painfully, and moved toward the narrow door.

The kitchen was large and gloomy, despite the white walls and blue curtains, and there was a faint smell of gas in the air. A bowl and a mug sat in the sink. There were two doors, in addition to the one from which he had entered. The one on the left appeared more promising, but no sooner had he thought that than a loud boom came from that direction. A larger-caliber gun than the one in front, so there were two holding the upper floor. Where was Jan? If the Dutchman was down, then this business was finished, and he would be lucky to get out with his life. Lucky. Hardly the correct word. There was no escape but one for a man his age. He was not leaving without the icon, whatever the consequences. He willed himself to move toward the sound of the shot.

A short corridor led into a small room full of filing cabinets and black-and-white monitors. He saw the cars parked in front, several empty views of the grounds, the front steps, the priest wandering aimlessly around the side of the house. There were no interior views. A moment later he glanced up to see Van Meer standing beside him. Jan smiled.

“You’ve lost your hat.”

“Yes,” whispered Müller, repressing his shock at being so easily surprised. “I guess I have. What about that shot?”

“A poor one. Missed me by half a meter, but someone is up there.”

“In front also.”

Jan nodded. “This is an unfavorable position. Two on two and they have the high ground. Wisdom says we should withdraw.”

“Impossible. We’ll never have this opportunity again.”

Jan nodded once more, having expected this response. His eyes were directed over the German’s shoulder at the kitchen door, and as they spoke his head made small adjustments to catch any stray sound. There were moments when Van Meer seemed pure mechanics, pure calculation, but Müller could tell that the gamesman in him had been aroused. He would not leave now.

“I expect a large bonus,” Jan said.

“Done. The front stairs are long and straight. It’s no good.”

“There’s an angle in back. Maybe four meters from the landing to the shooter.”

“That’s the way, then.”

“Wait here.”

Müller despised the tone of command from inferiors, but he was getting used to it with this one, and he watched the entry to the stairwell as Jan ducked into the kitchen. The younger man returned a minute later with a bundle of dishcloths tied together, stinking of something. Cleaning fluid, perhaps. In his other hand he held a wet towel.

They moved carefully into the stairwell, then up the narrow steps together. Jan pulled a silver lighter from his pocket and sparked the bundle, nodding to Müller. The old man slid along the outer wall, aware of the fist-sized crater in the plaster an arm’s length away. Before he quite cleared the angle, he stuck out his shaking left hand and fired three quick bursts, the noise tremendous in that tight space, then withdrew. Jan stepped into the open spot and tossed his flaming bundle up the stairs.

The air smelled of acrid burning. Would they light up the whole house, Müller wondered, still shaking? Was it fear or anticipation? When had he become so nervous, so feeble? Jan stared at him with that damned serene expression. A scuffing noise came from above, a foot stomping the fiery bundle. Crouching, Jan slipped halfway around the angle, fired twice, and ducked back. There was a dull metal thud on the stairs above. The Dutchman leaned out once more, then darted up out of sight. Müller took a deep breath and followed, picking up the wet towel on his way.

Two steps from the top a black nine-millimeter lay on the stair, and there was a smudge of blood on the corner of the wall. Jan stood in the smoky corridor, looking left and right. Müller tossed the wet towel over the burning pile of rags, stamped on it several times. The floor was scorched, but nothing seemed to have caught. Bullet holes were everywhere.

“You hit him,” Müller whispered.

“In the hand,” Jan said. “Spear. He’s nearby.”

“But disarmed.”

Disarmed, wounded, surely terrified. The German mentally crossed the boy off. Now it was down to Dragoumis, and the odds were back in their favor. The icon was here, somewhere on the second floor, or the Greek would not have abandoned the first without a fight. The corridor they were in connected with another about four meters ahead, where a right turn would take them to the front of the house. Van Meer took a glance around the corner.

“Yes?” Müller prompted.

“Nothing. Lots of doors.”

“Can you see the top of the front stairs?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Then the Greek can’t block them without getting hit from here. Circle back around and come up the front, and we’ll move in from both sides.”

“Spear is here somewhere.”

“Never mind him. Dragoumis is the main thing.”

The Dutchman looked dubious, but he nodded, slipped down the short corridor, and vanished noiselessly down the back stairs. Müller edged to the corner and glanced around, seeing only what Jan had described. This was it. They were closing in by the moment. The surrounding houses were probably too far away to hear the shots, and Dragoumis would never call the police. They had him, unless they committed some blunder. Like losing track of rounds. How many had he fired? Only three, he was fairly certain. He searched his coat for his spare clip and came up instead with a small leather case. The syringe and narcotic. He had neglected to give Spyridis another shot before leaving the car. It hardly mattered; the man was out cold and bound besides. Yet such errors reflected a state of mind. He must focus. He must do better if he was to survive this day. No more mistakes. Be like Jan, he told his shaking hands, a machine, until the business was finished.

Benny’s silver Nissan came up the off-ramp at terrific speed, barely stopping for Ana to get in, and they were back on the curving parkway in under a minute. The first thing she’d done was call Benny. Matthew’s message had given her very little to go on; he’d only wanted her to know what he was up to in case something happened. However, he’d already told her the story about searching for his godfather’s house with the old girlfriend, who had grown up in that part of the world. Robin was the key. Benny went straight to Matthew’s apartment and ransacked it for an address book, which he quickly located. Men were notoriously bad about actually recording anything in such books, but Benny had found a Robin Sprague with a phone number, and Ana had convinced him that the call was better off coming from her.

It was early, and she had caught the woman preparing for work. There was the expected resistance and annoyance, and Ana had to toss out a lot of personal information about Matthew in order to prove the close connection. Then she told Robin that he was in danger-something involving his godfather. Robin knew Fotis, and clearly did not find this too hard to believe. The details had gotten fuzzy in the intervening month or two, but as best she could, she reconstructed the route to the house. Ana would not tell Benny what she had learned, but insisted that he pick her up on the way. He was already driving north at that point, and her ploy infuriated him. You’re putting Matthew at risk, he raged, but the delay would only be a few minutes, and the matter was too important for her to concede. She calmed Matthew’s parents by telling them she was going to see him, which was true, she prayed. Then she hurried down the hill on foot to Fennimore Road, and west a few hundred yards to the Bronx River Parkway exit.

“You see, no trouble at all,” Ana said as Benny accelerated.

“The trouble is in front of us. Put on your seat belt, I’m not slowing down.”

“You really think they followed him?”

“It’s what I would do. Now tell me where we’re going.”

They passed the Kensico reservoir and turned off onto more winding secondary roads. It would have been a drive to enjoy on another day, lakes and forest and gorgeous vistas, but Ana was tight with tension, checking every landmark against Robin’s vague instructions, trying to forget how much might depend upon her making the right choices. Before long they passed through a wooded dell, then came up a rise to the brick wall and pillared entry. Ana could just make out the slate roof beyond a screen of trees.

“This is it, this is the house.”

“You’re certain?”

“As certain as I can be, Benny. We’re not going on much here.”

Benny turned around out of sight of the house and returned to the wooded hollow, parking where the weeds had been crushed by the recent presence of another vehicle.

“Stay here,” he commanded Ana, putting her behind the wheel and making her slide down in the seat. “Keep your eyes on the road and the woods, and if anyone looks curious, drive the hell out of here. Don’t stop to talk. Don’t get out of the car for any reason.” He patted her shoulder. “You did right to call me.” Then he vanished among the trees.

She waited five minutes, then followed. She was frightened, but more frightened at the idea of sitting in that car and wondering what was happening up in the house. And she was angry; a slow, smoldering rage had been growing for days. The image of del Carros’ smirking face hung in her mind, taunting her. The trees had not yet acquired their full complement of leaves, but there was a distinct haze of green, and the small trunks were clustered closely enough that she could not see very far ahead. About thirty yards in she passed carefully through a great rip in an old chain-link fence. A little gully rose swiftly to level out behind a small stand of pine, beyond which she could make out the house, about a hundred feet away. She flinched violently when several sharp bangs issued from somewhere within the walls. So much for everybody talking this through, but who was shooting at whom?

Ana made her way behind the pines to the front of the house. Two cars sat in the long drive, and the front door stood half open. She moved quickly, in a long curve that would let her use the vehicles as cover. As she went from one to the next, her eye caught a figure slumped in the backseat of the black Marquis. An old man in a raincoat, with a blanket across his lap and a fedora pulled down over his eyes. His head lay still against the seat. Was he dead? She lifted the silver handle and the door popped open. Then she crawled over the seat to him. Ana had met Andreas only once, but she recognized him easily as she slipped back the fedora. Straight-nosed and sunken-eyed. Two days before he had seemed too young to be Matthew’s grandfather, but now he looked very old indeed. His dark eyes opened slowly and tried to take her in, but then closed again. He was ill, wounded, or drugged. She pulled the blanket aside and saw that his hands were bound, the fingers white from the loss of circulation. There was no obvious sign of harm.

She needed to get inside and find Matthew but didn’t feel she could leave Andreas alone. On the car floor was a bottle of spring water, and Ana snatched it up and wrenched off the white cap, putting a few drops on Andreas’ dry lips. His licked at them and coughed.

“Mr. Spyridis, try to wake up.”

She applied cool handfuls to both sides of his face, and he murmured some complaint. She shook him gently, then more vigorously. When she slapped his cheeks with more cool water, his hands sprang up out of his lap, fingers laced together in one strong fist, and just missed striking her under the chin. She slid back several feet.

“Mr. Spyridis, listen to me. It’s Ana, Matthew’s Ana. Matthew is in the house. Do you understand?”

He was looking at her now, confused and suspicious, but nearly awake.

“Matthew’s in the house,” she continued. “And Benny. There’s been shooting. What? What did you say?”

“Where is Müller?” he rasped.

“I don’t know who that is.”

“Del Carros.”

“I’m not sure. Did he bring you here? Is Jan with him?”

“Yes.”

“Can you stand?”

Andreas shrugged. She moved swiftly around the car and dragged him out by the door facing the house. He could not keep his feet without assistance, and slumped against the vehicle. What the hell good was he in this condition? She grew impatient trying to understand him.

“What are you saying?”

“Weapons,” he snapped.

“I don’t have any.”

The old man sighed, taking great mouthfuls of cool spring air, blinking.

“Search the car,” he commanded.

But there was nothing to find, no gun under the seat or in the glove compartment, no keys to open the trunk. Ana worked for several minutes to free the cord from the old man’s wrists, feeling fear claw its way back to the top of her emotional free-for-all.

Andreas massaged his liberated hands and looked to the open front door.

“Wait here,” he whispered, then moved toward the steps, stumbling, ridiculous. She nearly let him go, then ran after him, sliding her shoulder under his left arm for support, and they went purposely toward the door, until their progress was abruptly halted.

Ioannes stood against a bank of budding mountain laurel at the rear of the house and watched the burly, surefooted man slip in the back door. He had seen the man come out of the tree line and move swiftly and silently across the lawn, looking in all directions and yet never seeing the priest. More men had pulled up in front of the house some minutes before, just as Ioannes had gotten out of the car to stretch, and he had thought it wise to get out of sight. How many were in the house now, or who they all were, he could not guess, though there were at least two factions, since they were shooting at each other. Either no one had seen him yet, or nobody cared that he was there. Just a priest, after all.

The boy had probably been killed, Ioannes considered, sadly. These were dangerous men, and young Matthew was an innocent. His chances in the midst of this deadly cross fire did not seem good. It was all happening again, yet again. Ioannes would have to pursue his own solution. As quietly as he was able, he followed the big man into the house.

Instantly, before he even passed through the kitchen door, he heard two more loud shots, close together, to his right. The big, bearded man backed into the room from that direction, looking before and behind in quick succession, a large pistol in his hand. His gaze fixed Ioannes for a moment, but then slid past. He turned quickly and moved across the large kitchen, slipping through another door and into the dining room beyond.

Ioannes considered whether he might have become invisible to his enemies. This had happened before, during times of great need, and it would seem to reaffirm the necessity of his mission. Such power was not granted for no reason, certainly not to preserve the life of a weak, sinning priest. No, he had been delivered to this place, quite unexpectedly, for some purpose. He was an instrument. They were all of them instruments, poor blind fools.

His mind and spirit began to hum in a sweet unison. His feet moved him across the kitchen, stopping before the huge gas range. There was a smell of gas in the air, and he noticed that one of the dials was not in the off position. This kind of carelessness offended his sense of order. The voice in his head spoke just as his hand reached the dial, and he paused a moment to absorb the message. Yet only a moment; thought was the destroyer of action. He turned the dial to the high setting, without igniting the gas. Then he turned the other three dials as well, all four silver burners throwing invisible fumes. He waited a minute or so until the odor was strong, then stepped back. Was it enough? He went around and squeezed his arm into the space behind the stove, pulling hard on the narrow tube he guessed was the gas line, loosening it-did it hiss?-but not breaking it clean. He removed his arm. By the sink was a large bottle of industrial cleaner, which Ioannes emptied over the counters and floor. The noxious smell was now making him quite dizzy. What next? On impulse he followed the bearded fellow into the dining room.

The man was crouched by the long, dark table, gazing fixedly into the hallway beyond. He had clearly been there for some time, listening, waiting. He must be warned of what was about to happen, and Ioannes took a step forward, the floor beneath him groaning softly. The big man came out of his crouch and turned, finger to his lips and gun hand fiercely gesturing the priest back into the kitchen.

The air exploded with the sound of gunfire. Blood erupted through the big man’s jacket and Ioannes doubled over as something punched him in the stomach. They fell together, the bearded man twisting as he did to fire once at a thin figure standing in the hall.

The priest realized he had been shot as he hit the ground, and he waited for the pain to come. He rolled onto his side, looking to his unfortunate companion. The big man dragged himself into a sitting position against the wall, bleeding copiously through his shirt and jacket. He was angry.

“Son of a bitch,” he hissed, fumbling at his shirt with one hand and lifting the pistol with the other. It roared twice more, blowing chunks of plaster out of the opposite wall. “Damn it all to hell.” He looked at his oozing chest, then at Ioannes, shaking his head. “Fucking priests.”

Ioannes attempted to reach out a comforting hand, but the arrival of the pain stopped him. A long shudder racked the bearded man’s body and his wide eyes became fixed at a distant point. The pistol fell from his right hand. “Fucking priest,” he whispered again, and then was still.

It grew silent once more. A circle of throbbing discomfort was expanded from Ioannes’ diaphragm to encompass his whole body, and he had to bite down against the agony, taking shallow breaths. The test was always more difficult than expected, he reminded himself, but the thought was hard to hold on to. He succeeded now in reaching a hand out to wrap around the ankle of the man whose death he had just caused. Give rest with thy saints, O Lord, to this thy servant…he didn’t know the man’s Christian name, or if he even was a Christian, but the matter would be sorted out above. Too damaged to indulge in scolding or grieving, he refocused his mind on the task. Everything happened for a reason. The wound replaced his agitation with a mind-cleansing pain, and removed the possibility of escape. Slowly, excruciatingly, Ioannes pulled himself up on his elbows and dragged his stricken body back into the kitchen.

The smell of gas was strong; not as strong as he would have liked, but then, he was on the floor. An alcove with drawers was beside the range, and he pulled himself over there, noting the snaking blood trail behind him as he rolled over. He coughed wetly, tasting iron. His limbs were almost too heavy to use, but he pulled open the drawers, searching for one thing. There was not much time. The man who had shot him was probably the same one the big man had faced in the rear corridor. They had each circled around the house to ambush the other, the thin man winning the game because of Ioannes’ interference. Now he would circle back and find the bloody priest sprawled here. Very good, but let Ioannes find what he needed first.

“Father, forgive me,” said an arch voice from the rear corridor.

“You should not have stood so close to him. It was an accident.”

There are no accidents, thought Ioannes, his hand finding, at last, the familiar cardboard box. Calmness swept over him, and the keen euphoria of great possibility. The fumes were so potent he could barely stay conscious.

“I have great respect for priests,” the man spoke again, closer.

“My uncle, you know…” The surly fellow caught the smell then, and rushed across the room to the gas range. Ioannes saw the blond hair and narrow face, just as the cool blue eyes saw him lying there in the alcove. The man’s hand was upon the first dial, twisting it to OFF, but the eyes grew wide when they saw what it was the priest held.

“Don’t,” breathed the Dutchman.

“I forgive you,” said Ioannes, striking the match.

26

The muffled boom reached Matthew through the cool tiles of the bathroom floor. He had been lying there with a blood-soaked towel wrapped around his right hand, greasy sweat covering his face and neck, legs vibrating uncontrollably. Fear or shock, he wasn’t sure which. Whispered voices had come to him from the corridor, and several times a shadowy movement could be seen in the space under the closed door. They would find him. That seemed certain, and he would die like a wounded animal, quivering here on the floor. It was a sickening thought, but he had not been able to figure out any kind of plan.

The noise below filled him with a perverse sense of hope. It was possible that the attackers themselves had caused it, but to what purpose, especially downstairs? More likely someone else had joined the fray, or some device had detonated prematurely. Matthew had no idea, only a strong guess that chaos was his friend. He waited a few minutes to see what would follow. There was no sound in the corridor, but the smell of smoke began to reach him. He must get out.

Gently, Matthew pulled the bathroom door open with his good hand. A few inches, then a few more. Still nothing. Finally, he shuffled out on his knees. Black smoke billowed up the back stairs and raced across the ceiling, and the thick snap of flames below was audible. Crawling with the injured hand was difficult, but the acrid fumes required that he stay low. As quickly as he could, Matthew scampered around the corner into the next corridor, then along the wall to Fotis’ bedroom.

Just inside the door, two old men were wrestling on the rug. The one on top, in the gray suit, must be Müller, who was cuffing furiously at Fotis’ head, but without sufficient force to do much harm. The Walther was half under the bed. There was no sign of Müller’s gun. Matthew guessed that they must have surprised each other at the door and come to blows before either one could fire. He sensed rather than saw that there was someone else in the room, but he chose to ignore this for the moment.

Getting most of the way to his feet, Matthew attempted to drag Müller off using only his left hand, but a fierce wave of dizziness and nausea pushed him back to his knees. The old men ignored him. Fotis bit Müller’s hand and the German howled, striking the Greek on the temple with real force. Fotis went slack, and Müller scrambled off him, sprawling on his face as Matthew punched him in the shin. Smoke hung thick on the ceiling. The light through the windows was becoming obscured, and the air was bad.

Matthew’s gaze went to the mantel, and the other figure was there, all in shadow. The burned man, standing by the icon. They were a pair, the burned man and the ruined Mary, now surrounded by a weird glow. The same eyes, the same color to their robes; they were a matching set. The man stood in for John the Baptist, the third member of the triumvirate, on the right. And there was Mary on the left, with Christ, the object of their veneration, invisible in the air between them. Of course it was not real. An illusion of smoke and light, the delusion of a shocked brain and troubled spirit. Indeed, when he tried to look straight at the figure it seemed to lose its substance. It was only when Matthew’s hungry gaze fixed on the icon that the man grew strong again, great-eyed, solemn, waiting. There was a choice involved. Many before had faced it. The three living men in the room faced it now.

Müller was on his knees at the foot of the bed. He had retrieved his pistol and was searching his jacket for something, perhaps bullets, coughing hideously all the while. Fotis was shaking his head, attempting to rise. Matthew was watching them both, watching it all. The air was becoming poisonous, and he must do something at once. The icon called. He half stood, mind reeling, and imagined crossing the room, pushing Müller aside, seizing the Holy Mother, and rushing for the door. It would be easy, but his feet would not move. The burned man watched him. There was no judgment there, and no assistance. Ioannes’ words came back to Matthew. The work’s power was too strong, it bent intentions. Why had he come to this house? Remember. To save a life. Not for the icon, but to try to save a life.

The towel had come off somewhere, and his right hand bled freely from the bullet hole in his palm. Matthew ignored it, bent low to the dusty carpet to suck in a last breath of smokeless air, then proceeded to haul his struggling godfather onto his shoulder.

“What are you doing?” raged the Snake.

Legs shaking with the effort, Matthew rose to his feet, his head immediately shrouded in mist. Weak fists pounded on his back, old legs kicked the air.

“No, no, not me, boy. The Mother. Save the Mother.”

Matthew shuffled out of the room without a backward glance. Fire had reached the back of the second floor, and the visibility was very poor. He found the railing without going over it, and slid along to the top of the front staircase. Whoever and whatever waited below could not be worse than the conditions upstairs had become. Fotis was frantic.

“You fool. Go back for the Mother. What do you think you are doing?”

Choosing the living, thought Matthew as he started down.

Andreas had traveled over great time and distance before the girl awakened him. Some places he did not know, others he remembered well. The crypt beneath the church, and the child Mikalis, staring at him with the eyes of an old man. Pretty Glykeria smiling as they passed on the village street. Young boys mixing clay and straw with their feet, to make the bricks that would rebuild their burned homes. The balcony of his old apartment, with Maria, young and dark-haired, and Alekos playing with toy soldiers at their feet, the sweet resiny smell of a summer dusk in Athens. He went back to the hillside chapel again, with Kosta and Ioannes, and he noticed something new this time, something he had to remember for Matthew. He went to Müller’s well-guarded house at dawn; he watched the German’s face as Müller promised there would be no executions. He sat among the old, twisted apple trees in the late morning, eating bread, exhausted by his night’s work, and heard the ordered rattle of twenty rifles. The bread falling from his hands, the knowledge that he had been betrayed. All over again, though less intensely, he felt horror turn to rage, rage to sadness, sadness to resolve. He saw the hasty grave and the wooden cross in the Argentinean countryside, the end of the journey.

The anger was gone. In dreamtime, he could not maintain it. The white-haired specter who had walked into Fotis’ apartment had Müller’s eyes but was otherwise a pale imitation. A tired, desperate old man. Andreas could summon neither hate nor forgiveness; the fellow was simply pathetic. It would be best if he died, but Andreas doubted that he would be the man to kill him. In fact, he had no expectation of seeing the conscious world again until Ana Kessler woke him. And then, how hard it was to return. He had been light as a breath of air in his dreams, able to see and understand events that had been veiled in fear, rage, sorrow, lust the first time through. He had felt himself making the separation from petty concerns. How hard it was to return to the world, to this feeble aching form, to this weak and sluggish mind. Every bruise, every scar and strain, every insult to body and spirit over seventy-nine years was reintroduced to him in the space of a few moments. This brutal accumulation of experience was his life, and it was not done with him yet.

But Matthew’s Ana was beautiful, and beauty was always worth waking up for. Matthew’s Ana, that was what she called herself after he almost took her head off. The cold water on his face was effective, but it had felt cruel to him just then. Something bit at his wrists. He was surprised to be alive. He had no idea where Müller had gone, but it seemed logical that he was in the house, with Matthew, Fotis, and whomever else. Andreas’ will leaped ahead, his body dragged after, and he did not fight the woman when she gave him her shoulder for support.

The sound of the blast deep within the house caused them to stop. They waited a minute before moving, to see what would follow. When nothing did, they again made for the open door, from which smoke had now begun to drift.

To the left was a handsomely furnished living room. Ahead, stairs went up to a corridor already filling with smoke. Smoke was also billowing in from the rear of this lower hall and gathering against the ceiling of all these front rooms. To the right a dark-paneled dining room was gathering smoke fastest, as actual flames spat from a doorway in back. A bloodied figure sat against the far wall, next to the French doors. Ana saw him just as Andreas did.

“Benny.” She rushed toward him.

“Stay down,” Andreas commanded, “stay below the smoke.”

She slipped down and crawled the rest of the way. Very well, let her look to Benny; the stillness of the form told Andreas his friend was dead, but he put the thought aside. He went the opposite way, into the white living room, half walking, half crawling across the flokati rug, as far as the doorway into the study. Black fog filled that room, and there was no sound of activity, only the growing snap and sizzle of flames. Anyone in the rear of the house would be overcome by smoke already, and he was in no condition to help. He returned to the hall, the pungent reek beginning to burn his sinuses. Where was Matthew? His eyes drifted up the stairs. The air would be even worse up there, but there was no place left to search. He might last a few minutes. In any case, he could not face Alekos if he left without Matthew. Ana was now trying to drag Benny across the dining room.

“Ana,” he shouted. “Leave him, get out of the house.”

She seemed not to hear, and he realized that retrieving her would mean losing his chance at the second floor. He trusted in her survival instinct and started up, being careful of his feet, aware of how easy it would be to fall in his current condition. Halfway up, Andreas stopped suddenly as a strange form emerged from the gray mist above. Bent over, moving a careful step at a time. Matthew, with Fotis kicking and raging on his shoulder. The younger man stopped a few steps from his grandfather.

“Papou. Thank God.”

“Keep going, get out of the house.”

“Don’t go up there.”

“No, no. Keep going now.”

“Andreou,” screamed Fotis, red-faced and bulging-eyed, grasping at his old comrade as he passed him. “Get the Mother. Mikalis would want you to save her. The bedroom. The Prince is there.” The rest was lost in a wave of painful coughing, and Matthew moved on down the stairs, one hand bleeding badly.

Andreas looked up into the boiling maelstrom of smoke. Leave it. Let the fire do its work. There was no way out the back. The devil would come down these stairs, or not at all. No sooner had he thought it than another hacking cough sounded from above, and another form emerged from the smoke. Two legs with a square shape above them, white hands gripping the edges. Those eyes that Andreas had not seen in more than fifty years: dark, almond eyes on gold leaf, a maroon cowl of robe, rocking back and forth, moving down toward him, a painting with legs. Only gradually could Müller’s face be glimpsed above the frame, blue eyes squinting, just noticing Andreas below. He stopped, but there was no way to go but forward. The German was nearly paralyzed with coughing, but one hand disappeared into his jacket and reemerged holding a pistol. The blue eyes sized him up coldly. A loud shot rang out, and Andreas flinched.

But the shot had come from behind, not in front, and a large hole had opened in the icon, just above the Mother of God’s eyes. Müller reeled back violently, and fell across the upper landing, swallowed by the smoke, the icon vanishing with him. Andreas turned around to see Ana below, both hands gripping Benny’s.45, eyes wide with disbelief. He looked up again but could make out nothing. Suddenly, his lungs could not pull in air, only heat, and he moved down the stairs with all possible speed. Ana seized him at the bottom, dropping the pistol. Tears streaked her sooty face and her expression was wild.

“Matthew.”

“He is already outside.”

“Benny’s dead.”

“I know, child, we must go.”

“We can’t leave him here.”

“We must. Quickly now, go.”

They went as they had arrived, bent, stumbling, leaning heavily upon each other as they left the dying house.

Fotis lay on a damp patch of grass at the edge of the driveway. Andreas sat down beside him while Ana rushed past them to where Matthew knelt on the gravel, heaving and spitting. The Snake’s body was slack, all tension gone, as if the cord of his life force had been cut. Only the blinking eyes showed that there was anyone inside. There were black streaks of ash in Fotis’ hair, his left temple was bleeding, and there were bruises over the rest of his head. The thin, fragile limbs and gaunt face were the same as they had been at that troubling dinner a few weeks before, but the vibrant energy that had animated them then was utterly gone. He was not simply old but used up, dying. It might be tomorrow, thought Andreas, or a few months off, but it would be soon.

“Well,” Fotis whispered.

“It’s gone.”

The eyes closed for several moments, then opened again, staring at the sky.

“You killed him?”

“No,” Andreas answered, bemused. “The girl did.”

“The girl?” In different circumstances, Fotis might have laughed. The best he could manage now was a grimace.

Behind them there was a roaring rush, windows shattered, and flames licked out of the empty frames. The entire house would be consumed shortly. Nothing would be left but the exterior stone wall of the ground floor. From where they sat the two old men could feel the heat.

“You’ve killed me also,” Fotis continued. “All of you. You’ve taken what I needed to live. For what? To feed it to the flames? Better it should be destroyed than I should have it?” There was bitterness in his words, but little heat. “You’ve killed me.”

The words made Andreas tired. He could not expect wisdom or peace to come to his friend so near the end, but still it made him sad. It was a painting, nothing more. Pigment on wood, no pumping heart, no ageless spirit, no soul. He had held it himself, and he knew. They were all mad.

“You are dying from the inside, Foti. No one can help you.”

“You can help me. You can finish the job. You are the one who showed me the icon, made it necessary to my life. Then took it from me, twice. I do not understand why you have worked so hard to destroy me, but at least finish it.”

Andreas looked to the two young people. Ana was attempting to bind Matthew’s hand with her scarf.

“Send them away,” whispered Fotis, “so they will not see. Then put my body in the burning house. I am not brave enough to do it myself, Andreou. You must help me.”

“No.”

“And what if I tell you I killed your bastard brother.”

“I would not believe you.”

“I let him die, then. I was in the crypt, waiting for that fat Mavroudas.”

“But he got out through the flames, instead. So the plan was yours.”

“You knew that before now.”

“Including burning the church.”

“No, that was Mavroudas’ idea.”

“But you went along. You agreed to it. Or else you would not have expected him to use the crypt for his escape.”

“All right, then. I burned your brother’s church. I watched him come down the steps and fall at my feet, bleeding. And I did nothing. I left him to die. How does a brother punish that?”

“There was nothing you could have done. The wounds were too serious. It was evil to leave him like that, but you did not kill him. Your sins are heavy enough without borrowing others.”

“Andreou.” Fotis’ voice became pleading. “Cancer is a terrible death. And I have had these dreams. I am afraid to do what I should. You must help me.”

Nothing Andreas had just learned surprised him, yet it struck deeply. He had not wanted it to be true, had buried it in his heart, fastened upon the hunt for Müller as a means of leading himself away from the truth. His connection with Fotis could not survive this news. He had lost his friend already. And he could imagine no worse judgment than that which nature had already decreed. There was nothing for him to do.

“My punishment for Mikalis,” he said, gripping his old friend’s shoulder for the last time as he pulled himself to his feet,

“is to let you live.”

Andreas wandered over toward the younger people, hesitant to invade their intimacy, yet needing to speak to them. Sirens could be heard now, still far distant. A fragment from his dream, or memory, or whatever it had been, came back to the old man suddenly. Something he had not thought of in more than fifty years. He saw the icon there by the table near Kosta, the space between the two panels dug at with some tool. And then, after he had shot the boy, he noticed little scraps upon the table, paper-thin bits of beige cloth. And it had occurred to him that it was one of these which Kosta had placed upon his tongue to swallow with his wine. That last sacrament. He must tell Matthew, sometime. Or perhaps, in fact, he would not.

There was another rushing boom, and part of the roof collapsed, sending gouts of red sparks high into the air. Andreas watched intently. Nothing could have survived in there, and yet he would sift the ashes until he found Müller’s bones. The icon would be only dust. There would be no evidence of its destruction. They would have to trust to logic. They would have to take it on faith.

SUMMER 2000

EPIROS, GREECE

T he church of Katarini had been built over the ruins of its burned predecessor, and if he looked carefully, Matthew could see the places where the old stone met the new. He had been to this village and this church before, but not for years, and never with his grandfather’s unearthed memories, or the image of the lost Holy Mother, so clearly in his mind. According to the priest, the new construction followed the destroyed original closely, and Matthew tried hard to imagine the past still present in this place that was both at once. Was this the window that the andarte captain Elias had looked through for signs of his brother? Was this the same stone floor that had bruised the knees of his pious great-grandmother while she prayed, and her mother before, and so on for generations? Was this the patch of wall behind the altar where the Holy Mother was hidden for three years? Then abducted, rescued from fire, only to perish in fire in the end. Was fire its fate all along? Matthew was not a strong believer in fate, but he was withholding judgment on a number of such matters at present.

The church was large for the village it dominated, but smaller than his imagination had made it, and sufficiently cluttered with the usual assortment of modern improvements to impede his experiment in conjuring up history. The priest flicked a switch behind him and the bright chandeliers, ubiquitous in any Greek church now, cleared every shadow of ghosts. The images in the iconostasis-John, wild and lean; Mary, gentle and sad; Christ dressed in the white robes and miter of a bishop-were expertly rendered, but without any age or mystery behind them. The nave was crowded with unadorned pews, where once there would have been only a few, for the old, while the rest of the congregation stood, for hours sometimes, swaying half asleep on their feet, drugged by incense and the priests’ chanting. There was a big clock on the church tower, donated by an American businessman-village time eradicated, forced into hiding in the hills and caves, or down in the crypt.

The priest beckoned. Matthew followed him through the opening in the icon screen and around the altar to where a narrow passage ran back to the priest’s chambers. There was an almost invisible door in the wall of the passage.

“You want to go down?” Father Isidoros asked.

Matthew placed a palm on the wooden door. “Yes, I do.”

He turned and looked to where his father stood by the altar. Alex’s hair had come back gray, still surprising Matthew every time he caught sight of it. Yet the leanness had vanished, and the older man carried himself with the upright posture and determined stride that had been his signature before the illness. He was trying to take an interest in the church for Matthew’s sake, but he kept looking at his watch, as if he had an appointment somewhere else.

“Dad, we’re going into the crypt. Are you coming?”

Alex shook his head.

“No. I was down there once, years ago, that was enough. Enjoy yourself. I’d better find your mother.”

“She can’t get lost in a village this size.”

“Don’t underestimate her.”

The priest unlatched the door, switched on an electric lantern hanging from a peg within, and started down the narrow steps. A cool draft struck Matthew’s face, a high, earthy smell, like a garden shed. He took a deep breath and started down.

They had buried Fotis in a cemetery outside Ioannina. The old man had made the arrangements years before, so the logistics were not difficult for his executor, Matthew Spear. At one point it had seemed that only Matthew, his mother, and the priest would be at the graveside, but Alex had agreed to accompany them at the last moment, and Andreas had come up from Athens. He would not follow them on to the village, though. He had not been back to Katarini in decades and did not intend to see the place again. He was an Athenian now, and would die there.

Ana had wanted to come with Matthew. Or she had offered, in any case-a significant gesture. The fire, the killings, the whole business of the icon had traumatized her deeply, and she’d needed a few weeks to be away from everything having to do with it, including him. Even once they had started to see each other again, del Carros, Benny Ezraki, and the Holy Mother of Katarini were off-limits for discussion. Fotis’ death had opened something in Matthew, had freed him of some burden. Responding either to that or to her own heavy therapy, Ana seemed to be coming out the other side of her grief as well. In spite of this, Matthew had been slow to take up her offer. Perhaps intuiting that he needed to do this alone, she made plans to go to Rome with her friend Edith instead. Now he felt the separation keenly, and wondered if he had not made a mistake.

The bottom steps were deeply worn and polished by the passage of thousands. This was the old church. Father Isidoros moved slowly, holding the lantern up here and there. Matthew could feel the tightness of the chamber, the low ceiling, the narrow passages. So much history forced into this little space. There were fewer bones visible than he expected. The compartments mostly hid them, or maybe some had been moved elsewhere. Did they even use the ossuary anymore? In a far corner of the chamber, the priest stopped and looked back at Matthew.

“Here, this place here, is your family.”

The younger man glanced at the shelves, but there were almost no bones to see, and those there looked no different from any others. The conformity of death. Yet those yellow shards were his ancestors, maybe souls his grandfather had known in life, not so long ago.

“There,” Isidoros continued, pointing to the ground, “is where your great-uncle Mikalis died.”

Matthew knelt then and put his hand on the dusty floor, feeling around a bit, as if there might still be a warm spot where the body had lain. Nothing. If he sensed a presence here below, it was not to be found in any one place but was everywhere at once, in the very air. Nevertheless, he knelt upon that sad spot for many minutes, and finally the priest moved away and left him to his meditation. Prayer was no more available to him now than it had ever been, and seemed less necessary. He had nothing to ask, only a last task to perform.

From his pocket he took the smooth jade beads that had spent so many hours in his godfather’s hands. What worries had they absorbed, what secrets? What penance could they do now for a man damned by his own conscience before death took him? What was the life of one priest in the weighty scale of Fotis’ sins? Mikalis had forgiven, or not, in his last moments, and nothing that Matthew did now mattered. He sighed. Such an evanescent faith was no faith at all. He squeezed the stones in his hand and thought of his grandfather. For Andreas? Could it be for him? But no, the old man would not care, the gesture would be lost upon him.

A memento, then. Like flowers upon a grave. That would have to be good enough. Abandoned by the priest’s lantern, in darkness, Matthew placed the beads upon the stone floor and rose to his feet. A slight dizziness took him, and he leaned upon the cases of his ancestors’ bones to steady himself. The air down here was too thin for the living; they must go. He wandered back toward the entry, looking about the chamber once more, fixing it in his mind. He wondered if he would return, or whether this might be the last time that a Spyridis visited this ancestral space. Did it matter that the connection would perish with him? Surely the dead did not care either way.

The priest waited for him by the stairs, and they went up. After the crypt, the newness of the upper church struck Matthew more forcefully. The Holy Mother could never have come back here; it would not have belonged. The thought of the vanished icon opened that dark, aching place within him, as it had done a hundred times already in the past three months. Yet each time with less force. Deep breaths steadied him; he turned his face away from the priest. He would mourn its loss for a long time, the rest of his life, but perhaps Father Ioannes had been right. Perhaps there was no place for such a sacred work in such a compromised world. Except a monastery. Yes, that was the answer. Metéora, Mount Athos, Saint Catherine’s in the Sinai. The world still did not know all the treasures hidden away in those places. The Holy Mother of Katarini would have been quite safe. Why had he and Ioannes not thought of that when they contemplated its fate? It hardly mattered now.

The afternoon sun had gone behind the mountains when they emerged into the courtyard, and Matthew could feel the day’s heat dissipating, cool dusk coming on swiftly, as it did in these hills. Ana had given him the number of her hotel in Rome. She did not expect him to call, had encouraged him not to, in fact. But she had given him the number. Words were untrustworthy, false. The face spoke the truth. The eyes did not lie, if you knew how to read them. Remember her face, that day he had last seen her. What had it asked of him?

Orange light bathed the top of the distant hill called Adelphos, little brother to the mountains behind it. He would have liked to climb that hill with his grandfather, but he would do it on his own. Find the caves, maybe grow a beard and change his name, live like an andarte or a mad hermit. Matthew smiled at the thought. He would settle for climbing the hill, but not today, not just now. Now he had to find a telephone.