CHAPTER EIGHT

 

IT WAS a hot and sticky Athens afternoon when he returned from Tinos, rain-wrinkled and mud-spattered. He got in a cab and started to direct the driver to take him to the Hilton—God, how good a hot bath would feel. Then he remembered Yanni Elias.

He looked in his little address book. Rather than wrestle with the difficult names, he showed the driver the address and telephone number, as well as his own name.

The cabbie called and spoke in Greek, only a few sentences.

"He got new place now," he said. "He glad to see you... very glad."

It was dusk when they got to a poor, rundown neighborhood. Jason told the cab driver to wait after they pulled up in front of a little house. In the street, several noisy children were playing  balla—soccer.

Jason saw a man, clad only in shorts, lying on a canvas cot  in the yard under a naked light bulb strung from a grape arbor so Jason went in the garden gate. It had a bell on it that tinkled as he opened it, and the man, who had been asleep with a tape recorder in his hand, sat up.

"Van Cleve?" said a reedy voice. “'That you?"

Jason walked over to the cot. It was a terrible shock to him when the man extended his hand. Unquestionably this was Yanni Elias, but he was a mummy of the vigorous, vital man he'd met some twelve years ago. Blind, feeble, wrinkled as a raisin, and  skinny as a sideshow thin man, he struggled to get up, a dying man, then fell back.

"Jason? Yassou!"

"Yassou, Yanni!" said Jason. "How great to see you! How... how are you?"

Elias sighed, but with no self-pity. "Ah, you know, friend Jason, the mind is fine... it's the body. But you, Jason, you are really all right? How good of you to come. Here you catch me napping and recording my memoirs. And I have just got to Clara and Benito. Old Musso wasn't a bad sort actually— a fascist bully, of course, but always considerate of the lower folk, and he considered us journalists the lowest of folk, I assure you. Look here, I'm being rude. I'm drinking my ypovrihio—-my submarine." He pointed to a glass of water with thick vanilla candy submerged in it, next to his tape recorder. "Have some, Jason?"

"No, thanks, Yanni, I have no time." But he sat down on the edge of the cot.

Yanni Elias gave a faint chuckle. "You think you have no time, my friend! My doctor has told me my days are numbered. I have maybe a month."

Jason gave a low whistle of sympathy.

"Maybe if I refuse to pay his fee, he will extend my time until I do. But what brings you to Athens?"

Next door was an open-air movie theatre, in a large garden filled with sunflowers and fragrant jasmine and equipped with wicker chairs. Young people ate stragalia—popcorn—and drank cola as they watched the movie. Over the dialogue of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Jason filled in his friend about the past few years. He started to tell him about the scrolls, but hesitated; the man was so obviously sick.

“I’m thinking of writing something about Mount Athos,” Jason said.    "

"You, a writer on religious matters?" Yanni said with surprise.

"Not exactly," Jason smiled. “This Constantine, what do you know about him?"

Yanni snorted. "What do I know of Constantine? Everything. Well, everything and nothing, as they say. Everything except the mystery of why this man, a very astute, worldly man, mind you, would gracefully and voluntarily give up his leadership of the Church, and retreat to Mount Athos to live in seclusion as the abbot of a monastery, never to be seen by anyone but the monks. For what reason?"

"Then he really was a powerful force in the Church?" Jason asked.

"The most powerful man in the Greek Orthodox Church. But then there is the Vatican. If only people knew the inside workings of these two powerful churches, these two pious, Mafia-styled operations, locked in mortal rivalry. What would Jesus think if he came back and saw the things that are being done in His name? Sweet, romantic Jesus..."

"Did you ever meet Constantine, Yanni?"

"Did you ever meet the Pope, Jason? One does not 'meet' them Jason. Important people are "granted audience,' but men like ourselves—writers, journalists—we are granted press releases. Surely you know how much to believe of press releases, my friend."

"When he stepped down, wasn't that a big story? Didn't the press releases give some explanation?"

"That was the most interesting part, Jason. It should have been a big story. It should have been a stop-the-presses kind of story, but it wasn't. The releases gave no reasons, just that Constantine's job had been filled by another with no more fanfare than if you or I were replaced. It was not known for some time where Constantine was. That leaked out later."

"Any ideas, Yanni, any theories, hunches?"

He began to cough. "Who knows exactly what goes on with Constantine? I wish I did. It would make a good chapter for my memoirs. Some scandal, perhaps. Blackmail? Who knows? It would only be a guess, Jason... that is why I can't use it. I want this book to be a best-seller. The money is to go to my niece. Dying is not cheap."

"You mention scandal. What kind of scandal could touch a man who had gone that far?"

"As with any politician, the follies of youth may surface at any time— an illegitimate child, anything like that— maybe he stole from the poor box when he was nine years old. Maybe . . . maybe . . . you see? It is silence that arouses the curiosity that spawns such ideas. It might have been something as mundane as his doctor telling him to slow down.”

"But that would be a valid reason, no cause for secrecy?”

"Unless he was dying of advanced tertiary syphilis or a violent psychosis.”

Jason laughed. "You're right, Yanni — the mind is as sharp as ever!”

"Not really, Jason, but it's nice to hear you say so.

The taxi driver was honking.

Jason took the man's skeletal hand. "I'd best go, Yanni. Courage, my friend. I’ll think of you often. Maybe I'll even pray for you.”

Yanni smiled wanly. "Don't do anything rash, my atheist friend.”

"Agnostic, please."

Jason got up, started to go, and then, on an impulse, said, "Speaking of that son of thing, did you ever hear any talk about some scrolls — you know, sort of like the Dead Sea Scrolls or the Gnostic Gospels — only really heretical? Crazy stuff, the Messiah being a woman.”

"You mean," Elias asked, lowering. his voice, "the Ephesus scrolls?"

"So you have heard of them!"

Yanni's blind eyes stared off into space, into the past. "Some time ago they were brought to me by a man named Paul Krenski. Not the scrolls in toto, but enough to get an idea of the contents. He said he'd translated the work for a man in Izmir and made certain copies for himself. He wanted me to evaluate their authenticity, which, of course, I could not do, certainly not from a copy, although I had to admit the Aramaic samples that he showed me seemed valid and his translations seemed close enough."

“And what was your opinion of the story? Doesn’t it sound pretty crazy?"

"Unusual, perhaps—but then, isn't the story Nazareth a bit unusual?" Yanni shook his head. "No, I don't think Krenski was crazy, either."

"What ever happened to him?"

"He said he was going to Rome, going to the Vatican, see if anyone there could help him. I agreed that it would probably be there that archives might be found to lend credence to the story. I’ve never heard from him since, but then, I never really expected to."

"So where do you think the scrolls—the originals—might be?"

"I could make an educated guess. Constantine would know... and the Vatican might know. But I doubt it."

"Somehow you've just made the incredible sound possible, Yanni."

"History, Jason—the study of the history of human misconceptions, mythology, and superstitions—can make the incredible sound credible. God as a woman, a new idea? Hah!  It's been around for a long, long time, down through the ages to images from an excavation in southwest Turkey dating from 7,000 B.C., when the goddess was the dominant deity and males were only consorts depicted in animal forms like the pig and the bull. The original supreme deity was the bountiful Earth Goddess. More than a fertility idol, she was a metaphysical symbol, the personification of the power of space, time, and matter. Everything—and this is important—everything, including God, was her child."

"And what happened to the idea of God as a woman?"

"The era seemed to have ended around the late fifteenth century B.C., which just happens to coincide with the volcano eruption on the island of Thera in the Aegean Sea, which destroyed the Minoan civilization. With the dawn of the Iron Age, exit the goddesses and enter your—what's the word, macho?—thunder-hurling warrior gods."

"But what of the goddess in modern times?" 

"Believe me, Jason, I have thought much on the subject. Our modern concept of God, in my opinion, is really just the cosmology of the goddess Mother transformed by those patriarchal warriors. Christianity has kept a lot of the Greek mythological symbolism in its rites. Take the Eleusinian ritual of initiation. Dionysus, the god of bread and wine, was born of Persephone, conceived by her father, Zeus, disguised as a snake. Now match that with the Christian version of God, who, in the form of a dove, conceived God the Son, who died and was resurrected and is present, symbolically, in the bread and wine of the Mass. And for a final irony, friend Jason, how about the fact that one of the most celebrated temples to the great goddess stood at Ephesus, where, in 431 A.D., the dogma of Mary as Mother of God was first proclaimed by special council. There's a book you should read, Jason, by Merlin Stone, called When God Was a Woman. It should—"

"Yanni! I have so much to learn and you have so much to tell me!"

"But the gods, whoever they are—Zeus, Athena, Jehovah, Mary, Joseph, Jesus... Lael?—they have seen fit to make this our last meeting. Envy me, dear Jason. Shortly I'll know all the answers that you now seek so fervently."

Jason clasped the older man's hand warmly in both of his, tears in his eyes.

The cab's horn blew again, this time more imperatively.'

Jason gripped his friend's shoulders.

"Yassou, Yanni.. efharisto."

"Goodbye, Jason... God bless you. I shan't see you again in this life, but I look forward to seeing you in the next."

Jason went out to the cab. 

The driver wailed, "Mister, I sorry. Dinner waiting. My wife... she get mad, understand?''

But Jason was thinking about his dying friend and only nodded.

It was still hot and very late when Jason returned to the Athens Hilton.

"She's waiting in your room, sir," said a cadaverous room clerk with a pencil-thin mustache, as he handed Jason the key.

"She?" Jason looked quizzical

"Why, Mrs. Van Cleve, sir."   

Forty years ago he'd first heard a person called that—his grandmother. Then "Mrs. Van Cleve" gradually became his mother. Then the title was bestowed on his wife, Beth. But now Beth was gone, as were his mother and his grandmother. There was no Mrs. Van Cleve in his life now, and he felt a brief pang, a recurrence of the clutching pain of Beth's death that dwelled in his chest and that had lain dormant these past few days.

"And . . . you say she's up there?"

"Yes, sir. Hasn't been there long . . . fifteen, twenty minutes."

Going up in the elevator, he thought: Is this a trap? A prostitute? Or... could it be Tay?   

Nevertheless, he approached his room warily. He inserted his key as quietly as possible, quickly opened the door, and ducked back.

"Jason?"

He stepped into the room.

"Taylor!"

She was lying on the bed in a shantung skirt with a pongee blouse, her shoes off and her jacket hung on the back of a chair. She had been reading the Hilton guidebooks. She got up with an embarrassed laugh, wiggled her feet into her shoes, and said, "Nothing like making myself at home. Surprised to see me?"

"What are you doing here?" He frowned. "I mean, yes, I am glad to see you, but dammit, the risk!"

She looked so beautiful, even with her streaked brown blonde hair tousled. She came nearer and he thought again that she always smelled as though her clothes had been freshly ironed.

"I came here to beg you to stop this witch-hunt or God-hunt or whatever it is." Her voice had a tone that Jason hadn't heard in it before, more than her usual motherly concern. Was it fear?

She went on, "Nestor Lascaris, dead. Phillips Taylor, dead. I can't help worrying about you, Jason."

"You’re not worried about who can be doing this? Who is behind it?"

"What does it matter?" she cut in. The important thing is that this is much too dangerous and I want you — please — to give it up!”

"I can't quit now. Whoever is doing the killing isn't going to stop with Phillips Taylor and Lascaris.

"That's just what I mean!”

"But don't you see? I've got to keep going, to bring them out in the open. I'm probably high on their hit list, I know that. And if you are seen with me, you will be too. I think the only reason we're still alive is that they don't know where the original scrolls are and they think I'm on the track."

"And are you?"

"Yes." He told her about his interviews with Sister Eugenia and Yanni Elias.

"So you're off to Mount Athos—and more risking of your life?" She pulled away from him and walked across the room. "Jason, I have to tell you something...”

"Yes?" he said.

For a terrible moment she started to blurt out that Jonny had been kidnapped. But she knew it could result in disaster—destroy her chances of ever seeing Jonny again. She forced herself to say calmly, "Whoever they are, they mean business. Doesn't the death of two men tell you anything? I wish to heaven you'd listen to me. Forget it! Please!"

There was something strange about her tone. Her usual serenity had been replaced by tension. Had somebody already threatened her? "Are you all right?" he asked.

"Of course I'm all right. Just...just worried about this messy business."

'Taylor, I'm very sorry to have involved you in ‘this messy business’, as you put it. That's why I wish you hadn't come here. Much as I love to be with you, I don't want to involve you further," Jason said. "And as for the deaths of two men— that’s why I must get to the bottom of this."

Taylor frowned and looked away.

Jason sat down on the bed. "Who stands to lose the most if the story gets out?" he mused. "The Church. All the Christian churches, but especially the Roman Catholic Church. I'm beginning to wonder whether the people behind all this might not be in the Vatican itself."

"Don't you think that's pretty farfetched?" she asked as she walked to the bureau and took a brush from her purse. She could feel her heart pounding as she brushed her hair to cover her shock. The Vatican? Whom had she told about Jason and the scrolls? Father Bartolomeo! And where he was? At the Vatican! But how ridiculous! When John had left her, who had come to her aid, pulled her out of her depression? Who had arranged for her son to have adequate schooling? Who'd been her most reliable friend in these last few lonely years? She couldn't conceive of his kidnapping her child!

Jason broke in on her thoughts: "Let's forget about it all for now, Tay, and get something to eat. I'm starved."

She looked lovely as she smiled sadly at him in the mirror and nodded, but she had no appetite.

Suddenly, the lights began to flicker then went out. They looked out the windows and could see no lights anywhere in the city, except those of flashlights or candles being lit.

"What do we do now?" asked Jason as he rummaged through his pockets in search of matches.

"I think I have an idea," Taylor said in her low voice.

Jason lit a match and held it up to see her face. "Yes?" he said.

"We could have a picnic."

He held the match up for an instant longer to see if she was kidding.

She was not.

Half an hour later they had a bottle of wine, some cold chicken, and a wedge of cheese in a basket, thanks to the concierge.

"Have a good time, Mr. and Mrs. Van Cleve," the man had said as they left the lobby, now illuminated by the glow of large candles.

Athens was in total blackout, the only illumination coming from automobile headlights and the moon. Straight ahead of them the Parthenon's pillars glowed in the lunar rays. It looked more beautiful than when lit, as it usually was, by powerful arc lights.

"Lady, isn't that something?" said Jason. "You know, I once saw the Taj Mahal, but alone. One shouldn't look at this, or the Taj, alone."

"It is staggering," breathed Taylor as she slipped her arm through Jason's. "In this light you can barely see the scaffolding. In fact, the scaffolds seem somehow to add something... magical.”

Jason bantered, "What you're trying to say is, the less light there is, the more mystery and magic and beauty remain."

There was a frown in her voice as she said, "Oh, Jason, can't we even look at the Parthenon without sly allusions to those damned scrolls?"

"I hadn't thought of it that way, Tay.,. but the analogy is there, isn't it?"

They walked the rest of the way to Filopapou Hill in silence. There amid the pine trees they came upon some marble ruins. Taylor put the food on top of an Ionic capital that was broken and tipped sideways, forming a flat surface.

"You are clever," Jason said as he sat on a shard of another column.

“Talent," she said. "Pure and simple."

"Incredible," Jason said as he looked at the scene in front of him. The Acropolis was no more than half a mile away, and every miraculous detail of the Parthenon could be seen in the moonlight.

"Forgive me, Jason. I'm sorry I jumped on your remark back there. I'm just.. .just nervous these days."

“You sure you haven’t been threatened by one of these weirdos?" he asked.

She shook her head emphatically. Too emphatically.

"What is it, then?"

Oh, God, she wanted so much to tell him. "I'm just nervous about all this. For your safety and mine. And now Athos. What makes you so sure that this Constantine has them?"

"I'm not sure. Not at all. But from what Yanni Elias told me, it's my only lead. Constantine was the strong man in the struggle for the leadership of the Orthodox Church—very ambitious, very shrewd. But Elias said he could give me no reason for Constantine's leaving the heavy politics he was involved in to retire and go into seclusion as the abbot of a remote monastery on Mount Athos. Yanni says it's a mystery, and I just think it might be worth investigating."

"Did Elias know about the scrolls?"

"Yes, and if he is right about Constantine, then it is possible that Constantine could have the scrolls locked away up there... waiting for the moment to strike back at the Vatican for the pressure it brought to bear ruining his career.”

"Are you saying that the Orthodox Church could blackmail the Roman Catholic Church with the use of such documents?"

"I'm only saying that Elias made it clear to me that in the Church as elsewhere, there is often a power struggle. What I'm also saying is that I believe the scrolls may be up there somewhere." Jason turned and looked squarely at Taylor. "And I'm going up there and try to get the rest of the story."

"Want me to take you up there?"

"Females are not allowed on the Mount Athos peninsula," Jason said. "Not even female animals."

"I could take you to Thessaloniki and then as far as Ouranopolis," she offered. "I think women can go that far." She looked up at him. "Please? If you're being followed, they know by now that I'm in this with you, and they'll have two to contend with instead of just one."

"I'm grateful I found you, Taylor," he said. "I'm even grateful to the late Phillips Taylor, or whatever his name was, God rest his miserable soul in the turf club." He kissed her gently on her lips. "But I can't let you take any more chances. Much as I hate to leave you, I'd better fly."

She nodded in agreement, knowing it would be useless to argue with him about it.

And as they walked back to the hotel, the lights came on all over the city and some of the magic disappeared with the light.

They went up to the room and made love, but, unlike before, there was a feeling of tension, even desperation about it.

And afterward, Taylor lay there in the dark, thinking. There had been no message for Taylor when they got back to the hotel that night, and she felt both relief and foreboding. She wondered how much longer she could hold it all in, how much longer before she would crack and tell Jason the truth... tell him she'd been paying for her son's life by informing on Jason, tell him that all her generous offers were not motivated solely by love for him, but also by love for her son, her only child. Would Jason understand? Surely he would understand; he was still suffering from the grief of having lost his wife. How solicitous he had been, how concerned for her welfare. And how base it was to use this fine man to get her own son back.

But how could she tell him "now, without jeopardizing Jonny? What would he think of her if she told him, now, that she'd been holding out on him—even to the extent of letting him go to his death! But she'd tried to warn him. She had tried to get him to abandon this lethal project. It was not the same thing, she knew. It was not the same thing as telling him about her son's kidnapping, about the voice on the phone that gave her instructions. It was not the same thing as telling him the truth... the whole truth.

The first glint of dawn found Taylor still awake and waiting for Jason to finally open his eyes. When he began to move about fitfully, she pretended to be asleep, then gave a stellar performance of awakening from a good night's sleep... smiling, yawning, stretching...

"You're so lovely when you're asleep," he said when she opened her eyes.