The Kingdom

21

VLORE, ALBANIA

The Fiat’s dashboard clock clicked over to nine a.m. just as Sam and Remi passed the welcome sign for Vlore. Albania’s second-largest city, of a hundred thousand souls, sat nestled on a bay on the west coast, overlooking the Adriatic with its back to the mountains.

And with any luck, Sam and Remi hoped, Vlore was still home to one of the Sentinel disks.

An hour after Wendy and Pete had extracted the Theurang disk from the box and set about determining its provenance with Karna, Selma’s face reappeared in an iChat window on Karna’s laptop’s screen.

In her characteristically curt manner she said, “Jack, your research methods are impeccable. Sam, Remi, I think his theory about the two priests holds water. Whether we can find them and the other two disks is another matter.”

“What else have you been able to discover?” asked Sam.

“At the time of their deaths, both Besim Mala and Arnost Deniv had risen to the rank of Bishop and were highly respected in their communities. Both had helped found churches and schools and hospitals throughout their home countries.”

“Which suggests their burial sites could be more elaborate than a six-foot-deep rectangle in the earth,” Karna said.

“I found no mention of the particulars, but I can’t fault your reasoning,” replied Selma. “In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the EOC-”

“The what?” asked Remi.

“Eastern Orthodox Church. The EOC-especially those based in the Balkans and southern Russia-tended to make a big deal of such deaths. Crypts and mausoleums appear to be the customary method of interment.”

“The question is,” Karna said, “where exactly were they laid to rest?”

“Still working on Deniv, but Church records state that Bishop Besim Mala’s final posting was in Vlore, Albania.”

With time to kill until Selma could give them a more specific target area, Sam and Remi spent an hour touring Vlore, marveling at its beautifully blended architecture that felt at once Greek, Italian, and medieval. Shortly before noon, they pulled into the parking lot of the Hotel Bologna, overlooking the blue waters of the harbor, and took a seat in a palm tree-lined outdoor cafe.

Sam’s satellite phone trilled. It was Selma. Sam put the phone on Speaker.

“I have Jack here as well,” Selma said. “We have-”

“If this is going to a bad news/good news call, Selma, just give it to us,” Remi said. “We’re too tired to choose.”

“Actually, this is an all good news call-or potentially good news, that is.”

“Shoot,” said Sam.

Jack Karna said, “The Sentinel disk is genuine, I believe. I can’t be one hundred percent sure until I can check it against the wall maps I mentioned, but I’m optimistic.”

Selma said, “As for the final resting place of Besim Mala, I can narrow your search grid to about a half mile square.”

“Is it underwater?” Sam asked, skeptical.

“No.”

“An alligator-infested swamp?” Remi chimed in.

“No.”

“Let me guess,” Sam said. “A cave. It’s in a cave.”

Karna said, “Strike three, to appropriate an American phrase. Based on our research, we believe Bishop Mala was laid to rest in the graveyard of the Monastery of Saint Mary on Zvernec Island.”

“Which is where?” asked Remi.

“Six miles north, up the coast. Find a Wi-Fi hot spot, and I’ll download the particulars to your iPad, Mrs. Fargo.”

They took a short time to relax in the hotel’s cafe. Sam and Remi ordered a flavorsome Albanian lunch of ground lamb meatballs scented with mint and cinnamon, baked dough with spiced spinach, and grape juice enhanced with sugar and mustard. As luck would have it, the cafe had free Wi-Fi, so between bites of a delicious lunch they perused their travel packet, as Selma called it. Predictably, it was exhaustive, with driving instructions, local history, and a map of the grounds of the monastery. The only detail she could not find was the actual location of Bishop Mala’s grave site.

After paying the bill, Sam and Remi pointed the Fiat’s hood north. After ten miles, they pulled into the village of Zvernec and followed a lone sign to Narta Lagoon. The lagoon was large, nearly twelve square miles.

Upon turning onto the dirt road encircling the lagoon, Sam drove north until they came to a gravel parking lot on a patch of land jutting into the lagoon. The lot was empty.

Sam and Remi got out and stretched. The weather was unseasonably warm, seventy degrees, and sunny, with only a few billowy clouds inland.

“I take it that’s our destination,” Remi said, pointing.

At the shore, a narrow pedestrian bridge led to Zvernec Island, eight hundred feet away, that was home to St. Mary Monastery, a collection of four medieval-style church buildings occupying a two-acre triangle of grass on the shoreline.

They walked to the head of the bridge, where Remi paused. She stared at the bridge nervously. The ramshackle crossings they’d encountered first in Chobar Gorge, then again on their way to King’s secret dig site in the Langtang Valley, had clearly made more of an impact than she’d realized.

Sam walked back to where she was standing and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “It’s solid. I’m an engineer, Remi. This monastery is a tourist attraction. Tens of thousands of people cross this bridge every year.”

Eyes narrowed, she looked at him sideways. “You’re not humoring me, are you, Fargo?”

“Would I do that?”

“You might.”

“Not this time. Come on,” he said with an encouraging smile. “We’ll cross together. It’ll be like strolling along a sidewalk.”

She nodded firmly. “Back on the horse.”

Sam took her hand, and they started across. Halfway there, she stopped suddenly. She smiled. “I think I’m all better.”

“Cured?”

“I wouldn’t go that far, but I’m okay. Let’s keep moving.”

Within a couple minutes they’d reached the island. From a distance, the church buildings appeared almost pristine: sun-bleached rock walls and red-tiled roofs. Now, standing before the structures, it was clear to Sam and Remi the buildings had seen better days. The roofs were missing tiles, and several of the walls were either sagging or partially crumbling. One belfry was missing a roof altogether, its bell slouching sideways from its support beam.

A well-groomed dirt path wound its way through the grounds. Here and there, pigeons sat clustered on eaves, cooing and staring unblinkingly at the island’s two new visitors.

“I don’t see anyone,” Sam said. “You?”

Remi shook her head. “Selma’s brief mentioned a caretaker but no tourist office.”

“Then let’s explore,” Sam said. “How big is the island?”

“Ten acres.”

“Shouldn’t take long to find the cemetery.”

After taking a cursory stroll through each of the buildings, they followed the path into the pine forest beyond the clearing. Once they were inside the tree line, the sun dimmed, and the trunks seemed to tighten around them. This was old-growth forest, with knee-high tangles of undergrowth and enough rotting logs and stumps to make passage a bit of a challenge. After a few hundred yards, the path forked.

“Of course,” Remi said. “No sign.”

“Flip a mental coin.”

“Left.”

They took the left-hand fork and followed the winding trail before coming to a rickety, half-rotted dock overlooking a marsh.

“Bad flip,” Remi said.

They backtracked to the fork and began heading down the right-hand path. This took them generally northeast, deeper into the forest and toward the wider end of the island.

Sam jogged ahead on a scouting mission, turned and called back to Remi, “Spotted a clearing!” A few moments later he appeared from around a bend in the trail and stopped before her. He was smiling. Broadly.

“You generally don’t get this excited about clearings,” Remi said.

“I do if the clearing has tombstones.”

“Lead on, bwana.”

Together, they walked down the path to where the pine forest parted. Oval-shaped and roughly two hundred feet across, the clearing was indeed a cemetery, but almost immediately Sam and Remi realized there was something very wrong here. On the far side was a jumbled stack of pine logs; beside this stack, several house-high bales of withered boughs and branches. The earth in the clearing was pockmarked, as though it had undergone an artillery bombardment, and about half of the graves appeared to have been freshly churned.

To the east was a second opening in the trees, this one a nearly straight corridor, at the end of which they could see the waters of the lagoon.

Of the dozens of tombstones visible, only a few were undamaged; all the others were either cracked or partially uprooted from the ground. Sam and Remi counted fourteen mausoleums. All of these showed signs of damage as well, either canted on their foundations or their walls and roofs caved in.

“What happened here?” Remi asked.

“A storm, I’m guessing,” said Sam. “Came off the ocean and ripped across the island like a chain saw. It’s a shame.”

Remi nodded solemnly. “On the bright side, it may make our job easier. We won’t technically be breaking into Mala’s mausoleum.”

“Good point. But there is one more hurdle,” Sam said to Remi.

“What?”

“Let’s look first. I don’t want to jinx us.”

They split up, Sam taking the east side and moving north, Remi taking the west side and moving north. Skipping grave markers, each headed for the nearest mausoleum, stopping only long enough to read the name engraved on the stone facade.

At last, Remi reached the graveyard’s northeast corner, near the jumble of pine logs. As she approached the last mausoleum in her line, it seemed to be the least damaged of the lot, with only a few cracks showing in the walls. It was also uniquely decorated, she realized, her heart skipping a beat.

She called, “Sam, I think we may have a winner.”

He walked over. “Why do you think so?”

“That’s the biggest cross I’ve seen. You?”

“Yes.”

The wall closest to them bore a four-by-five-foot Eastern Orthodox cross, with its three crossbars-two horizontal ones close together near the top and one near the bottom canted sideways.

“I’ve seen a lot of those, but none this big. I’m curious: why the slanted bottom crosspiece? I assume it’s symbolic of something?”

“Ah, the mysteries of religion,” said Sam.

They walked the last few feet to the mausoleum, then split up, each walking around a side to the front, which they found was surrounded by a calf-high wrought-iron fence. One side was smashed flat against the ground. At the bottom of three stone steps, the mausoleum door was open-or, to be more accurate, gone. Beyond that, the interior was dark.

Carved into the pediment beneath the mausoleum’s sloped roof were four letters: M A L A.

“Nice to finally find you, Your Eminence,” Sam murmured.

Sam stepped over the fence, followed by Remi, and descended the steps. They stopped before the opening; the stench of mildew filled their nostrils. Sam dug into his pocket and came out with his micro LED flashlight. They stepped onto the threshold, and Sam clicked on the light.

“Empty,” Remi murmured.

Sam panned the beam around the interior, hoping there was a lower antechamber, but he saw nothing. “Do you see any markings?” he asked.

“No. That smell isn’t normal, Sam. It’s like . . .”

“Stagnant water.”

He clicked off the flashlight. They turned around and climbed the steps. Sam said, “Somebody took him somewhere. All the mausoleums I checked were also empty.”

“Mine too. Someone disinterred these people, Sam.”

Back on the monastery grounds, they spotted a man atop a wooden ladder leaning against the damaged belfry. He was middle-aged, stocky, and wearing a black bicycle-racing-style cap. They walked over.

“Excuse me,” Remi said in Albanian.

The man turned and looked down at them.

“A flisni anglisht?” Do you speak English?

The man shook his head. “Jo.”

“Damn,” Remi murmured, and pulled out her iPad.

The man called out, “Earta?”

A little blond girl scampered around the edge of the building and skidded to a stop before Sam and Remi. She smiled at them, then up at the man. “Po?”

He spoke to her in Albanian for a few seconds, then she nodded. To Sam and Remi she said, “Good afternoon. My name is Earta. I speak English.”

“And very well,” Sam said, then introduced himself and Remi.

“Very nice to meet you. You would like to ask my father a question?”

“Yes,” Remi said. “Is he the caretaker?”

Earta’s brows furrowed. “Care . . . taker? Caretaker? Oh, yes, he is the caretaker.”

“We were curious about the graveyard. We were just there, and-”

“A shame about what happened, yes?”

“Yes. What did happen?”

Earta put the question to her father, listened to his answer, then said: “Two months ago, a storm came in from the bay. Heavy winds. There was much damage. The next day, the sea rose and flooded the lagoon and part of this island. The graveyard was underwater. Much damage there too.”

Sam said, “What happened to the . . . occupants?”

Earta asked her father, then asked them, “Why do you ask?”

Remi replied, “I may have distant relatives from here. My aunt told me one of them was buried here.”

“Oh,” Earta said with some consternation. “I am sorry to hear that.” She spoke to her father again, who replied at length. Earta said to Remi, “About half of the graves were undamaged. The others . . . when the water receded, the people were no longer under the ground. My father, my sisters, and I were finding them for several days afterward.” Earta’s eyes brightened, and she smiled. “There was even a skull in a tree! Just sitting there. It was funny.”

Remi stared at the beaming girl for a moment. “Okay, then.”

“The government came and decided the bodies should be taken away until the cemetery can be . . . um . . . fixed. Is that the right word?”

Sam smiled. “Yes.”

“Come back next year. It will be much nicer then. Less stinky.”

“Where are the remains now?” said Remi.

Earta asked her father. She nodded at his explanation, then said to Sam and Remi, “Sazan Island.” She pointed toward the Bay of Vlore. “There is an old monastery there, older than this one even. The government took them all there.”