The Minoan Cipher

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Kalliste sealed the last cardboard box and placed it on the stack of cartons. Movers would come in later to transport personal possessions from her office to her apartment. She glanced around the small space with sadness in her eyes. Earlier, she had said goodbye to her colleagues at the Hellenic Ministry of Culture. A few co-workers had whispered that they might soon be following her out the door.

She left the office key at the reception desk and stepped out of the ministry building. As Kalliste made her way along the busy sidewalk, her glum mood began to fade. She had a new sense of freedom in her step. She practically raced up the stairway and strode between the tall Ionic columns leading to the entrance of the Athens National Archaeological Museum.

The artifact Matt had salvaged before the Minoan ship was destroyed offered endless possibilities. Life and career, she knew, were about to become exciting indeed.

She made her way to a gallery that’d been set aside to exhibit the cargo of the ship that had sunk in a storm after striking a rock wall off the island of Antikythera. Sponge divers had found the wreck of an ancient Greek freighter around the turn of the century. The ship had carried bronze, marbles and jewelry. But the most amazing object found was a clock-like machine whose purpose had baffled scientists for years.

She stopped at a display case and gazed through the glass at the Antikythera device— a piece that’d been at the museum since 1901. At first, it was thought to be an astrolabe, a navigational instrument that allowed mariners to chart latitude position using the sun and stars. Not until technical advances such as X-ray and imaging did scientists piece together the fragments. They concluded that the corroded assembly of gears within a circular bronze framework was an analog computer that could track the cycles of the solar system. Dated to the second century B.C., it had been fashioned hundreds of years after the Minoan mechanism.

Kalliste wondered how Hawkins had made out with Professor Vedrakis. She left the Antikythera gallery and walked through the museum to the garden in the classical exhibition section. She found a bench in a quiet corner and called Hawkins on her cell phone.

He answered right away. “Hello, Kalliste. Sorry I haven’t called you. I had a few issues to deal with.”

“That’s all right, Matt. I’ve spent most of my day moving out of my office at the ministry. I assume you’ve been busy talking to Professor Vedrakis.”

There was a pause at the other end of the line, before Hawkins said, “Where are you now, Kalliste?”

“I’m in the garden at the Athens archaeological museum. Why do you ask?”

“I wanted to make sure that you were in a private setting. I’ve got bad news.”

“Don’t tell me. The professor told you that the device was nothing like we thought it was.”

“The professor didn’t have the chance to tell me anything, Kalliste. He’s dead. He died at Gournia, where we were supposed to meet.”

Kalliste’s smile vanished. “Dear God. I always told him he’d have a heart attack digging in the hot sun.”

“I wish it were that simple. The professor was murdered.”

Struggling to keep her composure, Kalliste glanced around the garden to make sure no one was near enough to pick up the conversation. Tears brimmed in her eyes. Speaking with a catch in her voice, she said, “I want to know what happened.”

Hawkins told her how he had found the professor’s body at the bottom of a ravine.

“What makes you think he was murdered? He could have fallen.”

“That was my first guess,” Hawkins said. “But there’s more to the story.”

Hawkins described how a car had followed them from the Minoan ruins to Spinalonga, saying only that they had managed to elude their pursuers at the old leper colony.

“The professor was a wonderful scholar and a gentleman,” she said. “There was no reason to kill him.”

“Someone apparently thought there was, Kalliste. It’s no coincidence that he was murdered just before he was going to meet with Abby and me. Any idea how word of our meeting got out so fast?”

“I can’t — oh… Matt.”

“What’s wrong?”

“It was me. I told someone at the ministry. I wanted to rub it in the faces of those bastards. Now, because of me, the professor is dead.”

“Don’t go there, Kalliste. You didn’t kill the professor. The creeps who tried to nail me are the guilty ones. Tell me who you talked to.”

“A fat pig named Papadokalos. He’s a bureaucrat in the ministry. Totally dishonest and unscrupulous. He’ll do anything for money.”

“Even act as a paid informant?”

“Yes. I have no doubt of that. I’m going to rip his heart out and step on it when I see him.”

“I’ll look forward to the stomping party but it will have to wait until we deal with more important matters.”

“You’re right of course, Matt. I have an ancient scroll written in Linear A. It could be important. Is the machine functional?”

“It will be when Calvin gets through with it. He’ll have this thing purring like a Swiss watch. We’ll need a quiet location to work without interruption.”

“I know just the place. Remember my house on Santorini?”

On the last night of the Kolumbo expedition she and Matt had celebrated at a taverna with a bottle of ouzo and wound up at the little marshmallow-shaped house perched on a cliff overlooking the volcanic caldera. He’d spent the night and nature had taken its course.

“The house will be perfect. I’ll ask Cal know to meet us there,” Hawkins said. “Leave Athens as quickly as possible. Don’t tell anyone where you’re going, and make sure that you’re not followed.”

“I’ll gather up a few things and take an island ferry. See you later today.” She sighed heavily. “I can’t get over Dr. Vedrakis, but I’m so glad that you are all right. Before I hang up, could you tell more about the men who murdered the professor?”

“They were dressed in black and they had wide shoulders and narrow waists. One of them was bald and his scalp had been painted blue. Don’t know about the others because they were wearing hats. Ring a bell?”

She sat there in stunned silence, then said, “I’m afraid it does, but it’s too fantastic.”

“Nothing about this day would surprise me. We’ll talk about it when I see you. Be careful, Kalliste.”

“You too, Matt.”

Hanging up, she went back into the museum, climbing to the Thera exhibition gallery located on the second floor. The room held artifacts excavated from the ancient city of Akrotiri on Santorini. She walked past the cases of vases and urns, the graceful paintings of swallows and ships, until she came to a fresco that depicted two boxers dressed in loincloths.

Kalliste stared at the painting as if in a trance. They had narrow waists and barrel chests; the scalps had been shaved and painted blue.