THE NEXT morning Jason and Andoni did not head back for Karyes, Daphne, and Ouranopolis as they had been commanded to do. Once out of sight of Vatopedi, Andoni set Mangas on a trail toward Simonopetra, at Jason's insistence.
It was warm in the sun, but still cool in the shade of the cliffs. The mountain in front of them grew more majestic, and the scenery became more and more rugged. As Jason, Andoni, and Mangas walked up the trail that looked from a distance like a coil of rope dropped at random from the mountainside, a game bird suddenly exploded at Jason's feet and whirred away to another patch of cover. Conifers, myrtles, dwarf oaks, rock holly, and various nameless shrubs gave way to groves of ilex, gnarled and shady.
They could see, to the west, a series of giant white glissades, slabs of stone waiting to fling themselves into the sea, whose blue edge ringed each inlet and cape like the gradations of a peacock's tail.
On the eastern horizon they could faintly see Lemnos and the Asia Minor coast, the plains of Troy from where, as Jason had read in researching his travel articles, Tozer had seen the platform where he and Andoni now stood as "towering from the horizon like a vast spirit of the waters when the rest of the peninsula is concealed below.” To the north, the wastelands of Cavalla , Thrace , and Dedeagach led to the junction of the Dardanelles .
At one point they looked up a canyon at a natural bridge, a great stone arch.
"Beautiful country, Andoni” Jason said.
They didn't see the man there, lying flat on his stomach with a pair of binoculars trained on them.
McCue was somewhat confused; Van Cleve and the big Greek arrived at the monastery yesterday before noon. Then, shortly afterwards, what looked like the big boss monk of the place left with some other monks. They didn't head for Karyes; they went down a trail to the south. McCue figured he had a good setup because he could see everyone who came or went from his spot on the wooded hill about a hundred yards above. By nightfall, Van Cleve had not come out, so McCue ate one of the candy bars he'd bought back at the Athens Hilton, had a cigarette, and went to sleep curled up on the soft mulch of dry leaves.
Then, early in the morning, before dawn, he heard some noise: the clatter of hooves. He rolled over and peered down at the monastery. It was Van Cleve and the big Greek, with the donkey. And they were heading out the same way the bigshot monk had gone.
He got up and watched his quarry through the field glasses as they made their way up the path. Well, he thought, it was probably time for him to make his move. No way to tell, whether Van Cleve had the scrolls or not, and while it'd be nice to get the bonus for the scrolls, McCue was getting damned sick of the whole assignment and wanted to get back to civilization as soon as possible.
But this really looked like the time to finish the job, especially if they kept going up toward those cliffs. He could shoot them and throw them into one of those deep crevasses and they'd never be found; no bodies washing up on the shore to raise embarrassing questions. Then, if Van Cleve had the scrolls, fine, and if he didn't the Fat One in San Francisco
He put the binoculars in his jacket pocket, and picking up the woven market basket with his two-piece rifle in it, he set off at a dog trot on a trail parallel to the one Van Cleve was on with the guide.
"Sorry about last night," Jason was saying as they climbed and climbed. "They wanted me to find that box—it was a setup."
The big man was morose. "Constantine
"My guess is he knows already."
How could Jason explain the compulsion to find those scrolls to someone like Andoni, when he didn't understand it very clearly himself? And now, because the permit had been revoked, Andoni was having to take him to Simonopetra by this sneaky, difficult way, staying off the main path, stealing through the woods like hunters or outlaws. Now he understood why the Council of Five examined travelers so closely. He felt slightly chagrined when he thought of those five old men having placed their trust in him.
"We better go up this way, boss. We run right into Philotheou, we go down that way. And you don' got no pass no more."
"Another monastery, Andoni?"
"Right. We go this way now, toward the sea, and we come to Simonopetra. But it's gonna be rough. No trail down this way, and this side of mountain got lots of rocks."
"How far are we from Simonopetra?"
Andoni shook his head. "Don' you got enough, boss? Better we forget about Simonopetra. Constantine
"I've been thinking of not approaching Constantine
Andoni filled their canteens from a nearby spring and they continued up the hillside in the brisk morning air. There was snow in the ravines and snow hanging on the ledges above them, and, while the sun was warm on their backs, they wore jackets and their hands were cold. Snow in summer? But there it was, deep in the canyons on both sides of the narrow ridge that Andoni was leading him along.
Andoni told Jason about the passage: "The monks, they call this the Valley of Silence
A narrow ravine, slashed out of the mountain, was bottomless with perpetual snow. It was an approach to Simonopetra that monks were reluctant to take since the day that Father Emmanuel from the Grand Lavra met his death here.
"Avalanche here lots of times, in summer like now. I fix Mangas's feet," Andoni said. "Noise make snowslide."
Jason watched as Andoni tied rags around the donkey's hooves, then looked around to take in the beauty of the place. Back toward the great mountain, the canyon was an endless ribbon of white, undulating gently down toward them and be coming wider as one looked higher and higher toward Mount Athos, forming a huge V and finally disappearing into the clouds that hung about the top of the Holy Mountain
that sprawled in the valley below. "That St. Paul
Slowly, carefully, they entered the valley, and it looked innocent and totally unthreatening. Then, suddenly, Mangas stopped, looked down, and stood motionless. Jason glanced over at Andoni, but he too seemed confused. Then Mangas opened his mouth wide and brayed. A tiny sleeping hedgehog unwound itself and scurried off into the bushes, but Mangas kept braying. Andoni fell on him and with both hands tried to close his mouth, but the damage was done.
The earth shook. Then boulders, rocks, and snow began to cascade down the mountainside. The donkey continued to emit shrieking sounds and reared fright with Andoni clinging to him, trying to shut him up. The bulk of the falling material landed well in front of them so that no one was hurt; but the trail to Simonopetra was cut off.
"Oh, damn!" Jason stood looking helplessly at the impasse.
"Damn!” he said again.
"Mangas sure fucked it up for us, boss," said Andoni.
"He sure did," Jason agreed.
Andoni shook his finger at Mangas, yelling, "You sure fucked it up, you crazy old.." Then he turned away, saying, "But what the hell, he jus' a jackass!" He noticed the serious look on Jason's face.
"So?" he said. "Maybe we go find shack someplace ... rest... I fix something for you to eat."
Again Jason scrutinized the Greek's face. Why was he so eager to abandon this trip? Was there really a difference in his attitude since Jason had told him about the scrolls, or did he imagine it? But Andoni's good-natured expression revealed nothing, and his old brown eyes were guileless.
"Cards on the table," Jason announced.
Andoni frowned and said, "No, boss, I bring no cards. But we can play tavli when we get back—"
"I want the truth, Andoni!" Jason said. "Why are you so reluctant to take me to Simonopetra?"
"Boss, why you have to go there? You no can see Constantine
"I have no intention of stealing anything! I simply want to verify that the scrolls do exist."
"Then why you got to see Constantine?"
"Because he's the only person I know of who can vouch for their authenticity, tell me whether or not they're the real thing."
"Why you got to do all that?"
Jason shook his head. "You've acted strangely ever since I said I wanted to go to Simonopetra. There's something you're not telling me."
Andoni hung his head like a small boy and said softly, "I jus' don' wanna go back there."
Jason looked at him quickly. "Back?”
"I was acolyte—like novice? Where you think I learn English? Not in war. I learn here at Simonopetra, and that why the English, they like me. Because I can talk with them. Oh, ever one say, Andoni smart. When Andoni older, we send him away to school. But it never happen, boss.”
"Why did you leave?"
"It was good life when I was young boy. But when I was young man, it not so good. I needed woman. I not made to be monk. My family very poor. Got six sisters, two brothers— who gonna feed them? I come along nex' to last. They give me to God, they say. And when I was young boy, it was good life. It good thing to do that time in my life. I no go back now, but good then. Like say you screw Queen of England eh? Good thing to have done, but maybe not so good when you do it, eh?"
“Then you know the layout of Simonopetra, Andoni. You know where the library is? Where they would keep the scrolls?"
"Library in big tower. Lots of books, maybe more valuable than books at Vatopedi. But they got guards, keys. Not easy to get in library”
'Tell me, Andoni—" Jason's mind was beginning to put together a few salient facts. "The work you did for Mrs. Phillips—did that have anything to do with the library?"
"Nah,'boss," Andoni shook his head conclusively. "I never meet Mrs. Phillips. Someone call me and say a friend of Mrs. Phillips gonna visit me, ask for my services. I s'pose to do ever'thing I can to help him."
"Someone?" Jason asked. "Who?"
"A man I know long ago. He pay me lot of money to go to little hesychasterion—monk's eagles' nest—hut up on mountain. This man looking for papers too."
Lascaris’s nest, Jason thought.
"What kind of papers?"
"Jus' some old papers, some papers s'pose to be wrapped in old linen sheet, he say."
"And did you find them?"
"Nah, boss. But he say that's okay. He pay me anyway. That same man call me about you and Mrs. Phillips."
"How long ago did he ask you to do this Andoni?”
“The day before you come, boss.”
Jason felt the hair on the back of his neck doing something strange. He felt a constriction in his chest. He felt very close to blacking out.
That was it! Someone had already looked for the scrolls in the aerie that Lascaris had once lived in. So now they were tracking Jason's every move, hoping he'd be able to lead them to the scrolls. And Taylor must be a part of this! Those mysterious phone calls she kept getting—he remembered how she'd close the door so he couldn't hear, how she gave such feeble excuses for them! No wonder she was so accommodating, so helpful, so eager to drive him around, so interested!
Jason's knees felt wobbly and he sat down on the ground, looking at the pile of rocks and snow blocking the path to Simonopetra.
This was the woman I trusted, he thought. This was the one person in the whole world who knew what I was doing and. why I was doing it. The only person who could have told the world what might have happened to me if I should be killed. Jason had never felt so completely alone in his life. Even the death of his wife had not left him so totally abandoned, for his friends had all rallied around him in sympathy. This was different. This time there would be no one. Only Taylor knew what was going on, and she was apparently working for the opposition; whoever it might be. The Vatican? Constantine? Could the leader of this whole conspiracy be Constantine? Was it the almighty abbot who was drawing him closer, to control him, to find out how much he knew, to decide his fate?
But Taylor! How could she have deceived him so completely? Could she have fingered poor old Lascaris and Phillips Taylor? And who was this friend of hers who was here, trying to beat him to the scrolls? Was Andoni hired as hit man?
He looked over at the old Greek, who was now stroking the donkey and muttering to it benignly, and Jason's gut feeling was that the last supposition could not be true. But then, he'd been wrong about Taylor, hadn't he? Still, he knew his life was in danger and he could not afford to take risks.
Rage welled up in him and he stood up. No one is going to do this to me, he thought. I am going to go down to an unmarked grave, nor am I going to be swayed from my original purpose. I am going to find those scrolls and I am going to find out what in the name of Christ is going on here!
"Andonil" The force of Jason's voice made the old man jump. He left his donkey and came forward with his eyes widened. "What's matter, boss? You all right?"
"I want the truth and all of it!" Jason said. "Let's start with what Mrs. Phillips's friend said when he first contacted you."
Andoni started to talk hesitantly, then more freely. The story came out piecemeal, but how much was true? It was much the same as he'd already told Jason. He'd been hired to ransack the hermitage that Lascaris had once occupied; he found nothing, although he'd searched for a whole day, even removing part of a wall that looked like it might be a hiding place.
"But he pay me all the same. He nice man. She must be nice lady too."
"Oh, sure," Jason said. "Very nice." He looked hard at the old man, who had apparently not caught the sarcasm in Jason's voice. What should he believe? Taylor had sold him out, and Andoni was working for Taylor or whoever her "friend" was. They could have told this old fool anything.
"I won't need you anymore, Andoni. I'll find my own way to Simonopetra.”
“Boss, wait. I come with you.”
"No. I'll send the rest of your money to the taverna. I don't need you anymore."
"But, boss, what I do wrong? Why you don' want Andoni to take you to Simonopetra? You gonna need me, boss. How you gonna find your way out of Valley of Silence? You see how dangerous—"
Jason shook his head and said adamantly, "You've done nothing wrong. I simply will not need your services any further, and that is that."
Jason stepped off the path onto the crusty snow, and started crunching and sliding down the steep ravine. It had been many years since he tried climbing down a snowy mountain, and he realized that it was much easier to do on skis. Certainly it was less awkward. He had gone down about a hundred yards when he stopped and turned. Andoni was still there, with his head against Mangas's neck. Jason turned and continued his graceless plunge down the hillside as he fumed over the thought that while he'd been talking to Sister Eugenia in Tinos, Taylor had been working with the opposition to beat him to the scrolls.
Jason had walked what he guessed to be about ten minutes in the increasingly mushy snow when he saw the welcome stretch of pine woods in front of him and the path that led through them. He was relieved to see that he would soon be out of the snow. The path appeared to be a well-traveled trail, and it would surely lead to Simonopetra.
He stepped up the pace, lifting his knees high, and he was almost running through the hindering slush and ice.
Perhaps it was this clumsy gait that caused McCue to miss. Because of the crunching of his shoes in the snow, Jason heard nothing, did not detect the breathy thump of the bullet out of the silencer muzzle. All he saw was a patch of snow kicking up in front of him, and he knew that whoever was shooting at him had to be above and behind him.
He jerked the Luger that Taylor had given him from his pocket and whirled, crouching to make himself a smaller target for his assailant. Two hundred feet away, a cluster of boulders rose from the snow in a crude pyramid. It was the only place his would-be assassin could be hiding. He saw an opening in the rocks, fired once at it, a token shot to show that at least he had a weapon, and then turned and ran as fast as he could to get out of the open, unprotected ground. His only hope was the woods, the growth of pine trees some fifty yards away.
He found it impossible to run very fast in the sloppy snow, especially as he was also trying to zigzag to present a difficult target for the unknown sniper. When he was one hundred feet from the trees, a chunk of snow exploded ahead of him frighteningly nearby, and he knew the marksman was finding the range. He had no choice but to continue running as best he could. Now, for the last spurt, he abandoned the zigzagging and simply ran flat-out toward the nearest clump of trees. He had almost reached the pine grove when he felt the bullet hit his right shoulder. There was little pain; it was simply as though a heavyweight boxer had struck him a savage blow to the deltoid muscle. The force spun him around and slammed him to the ground, sending the Luger flying from his grasp. He shook his head, then scrambled to his feet and literally dove the rest of the way into the trees, like a football player plunging over his center for those few precious yards to a touchdown. He ran on all fours until he was safely deep enough among the tree trunks to stop. Panting hard, he put his left hand to his shoulder and drew it away, the fingers warm and red with blood. He knew it was not very serious, but he also knew it would be painful soon.
He looked out through the trees. He could see a figure emerging slowly from behind the rocks, holding his rifle cautiously at the ready. So—this little insignificant man was the assassin. He didn't look like a killer, yet he loomed purposeful and lethal as he clumped down the mountainside toward the grove of trees.
Jason saw the Luger half-buried there in the snow, so near and yet so far; the hit man must have seen it also. Jason could step out and make a run for the weapon, but the odds were that this man Would nail him before he could even reach the gun, much less pick it up, aim, and fire it. It was clearly a case of an amateur pitted against a professional.
He saw a thick stick lying off to one side of him. It had a sharp bend at the end, like a hoe. He picked it up and hefted it. It was a good club. As the assassin came closer, Jason retreated more into the trees. He saw the man bend over, pick the Luger up out of the snow, wipe it off, and put it in his belt.
Jason found the largest tree trunk close to the path and stationed himself behind it, club raised. He looked through the foliage and saw the hit man enter the path cautiously, his rifle half-raised, his feral eyes darting from side to side. He was no fool; he knew he had hit Jason, and the splotch of blood in the snow confirmed it. Probably hit him bad—too bad for him to be able to make a run for it. He was probably holed up here, maybe dying. Maybe he had another weapon.
The assassin took a few more steps along the path. He was some twenty feet from Jason when he suddenly turned abruptly and walked briskly back the way he had come.
“Why did he do that?” Jason puzzled. Maybe he suspected that Jason was waiting to ambush him. What he was probably planning to do was to go around the woods, around Jason, and wait for him at the other end of the path with a bullet.
Jason would not fall into his trap. He would do the opposite. He would go the other way, go back and try to find the continuation of the first path that had been covered by the avalanche.
He waited a few moments. He felt his shoulder. The wound was starting to go cold, starting to throb and ache. But at least the bleeding had stopped. With the club over his left shoulder, he walked out into the path and retraced his steps toward the meadow.
As he stepped out from the path, he heard a flat voice with Irish overtones say chillingly, "You'll be droppin' the shillelagh now, Mr. Van Cleve."
Not three yards away from him, leaning casually against a tree trunk, an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips, the rifle resting in the crook of this arm, stood McCue. Jason froze. "Shillelagh? he asked ingenuously, while slowly moving his left hand up to get a better grip on the big stick still resting on his shoulder.
"I think you folks call it a club. Drop it."
"Listen," said Jason, playing for time. "I know you're going to shoot me, that you've been hired to kill me. But before you do, can't you just tell me who sent you? Taylor Phillips? The Vatican? Who? It's no skin off your nose to tell me now."
"No time for stupid questions," McCue growled. "You've seen too many movies, Van Cleve. The bad guy telling the good guy everything before he kills him. I'm not telling you anything, just doing my job."
"And your job is...?"
"Was to kill you when you got the scrolls."
Jason said casually. "You don't see any scrolls on me, do you?"
"The Greek got 'em?”
"Do you see them on me?"
Jason edged a little closer.
"No I don't, and I don't care, either. Maybe the Greek's got 'em on the donkey. I'll find out soon.”
“You didn't really buy that business about some crazy scrolls, did you?" Jason took a step closer.
McCue didn't say anything. He studied Jason with narrowed eyes and began to fish with two fingers into his breast pocket for a match.
"You think all this fuss was over some old papers?" asked Jason.
"What then, man?"
Jason leaned forward conspiratorially and said, "Gold, my friend. Solid Greek gold! Chests of it, just lying there in the monastery, waiting for us. And I could cut you in on it. Worth twenty times whatever your employers are offering you."
McCue shook his head. "They're paying me well, and—"
Jason gave a laugh. "They're going to pay you well, all right—with bullets. Cooperate with me and—"
"You don't really expect me to buy that bit of cock-and-bull, do you?"
He glanced down as he extracted the matches, and Jason took advantage of McCue's momentary distraction. He leaped forward, at the same time smashing the stick down in an arc as hard as he could. The club didn't quite reach McCue's body, but it smashed against his rifle and his forearm, and the gun was knocked out of the killer's hands. He stumbled backward with a cry and fell in a sitting position. But before Jason could raise his club to attack again, McCue yanked the Luger out of his belt and aimed it at Jason's chest.
"Drop it, Mr. Van Cleve!" panted the steely voice. "You interrupted me, and I don't like being interrupted. Now I shall finish—"
It proved to be an ironic ending to a sentence he was never to complete. A large, black-hooded form stepped out of the trees behind the seated man. One wide-sleeved arm shot out and its hand closed around the wrist of McCue's shooting hand.
The monk's other arm went around McCue's throat. Having thus secured the assassin, the monk banged the hand that held the pistol against a rock until the fingers loosened their grip and dropped the weapon.
Then Jason saw the flash of a knife in the monk's hand and the fingers of his other hand and the other hand entwined in McCue’s hair jerking his head back and exposing his round white neck.
With horror, Jason watched as the man's throat became, in two seconds, three different kinds of melon. At first the flesh was pristine, like the skin of a honeydew; then, as the knife was drawn across it in a slow but expert sweep, the slice made by the blade looked like a thin wedge cut into the orange meat of a cantaloupe. But then, as the knife bit deeper, the cantaloupe changed into a great scarlet gushing watermelon.
The blood gurgled in the man's throat. His eyes rolled back until they were totally white, with no sign of irises, and then his torso pitched forward against his own legs.
The monk looked at Jason for a moment from under his hood, the black, intelligent but fierce eyes gleaming on either side of the falciform nose, and Jason saw that it was the same monk who had been on the boat with them. He started to say something, but he could not tell whether or not the monk intended to kill him too, and he could make no sound.
Then, as Jason tried to clear his throat, his benefactor, after wiping his knife blade on the back of McCue's jacket extended his hand.
"My name is Paul Krenski."
Jason took a breath. “Thank you," he said.
He stared down at the motionless body of McCue. Chalk up one more death to the scrolls, those accursed pieces of papyrus. Who was this man who had been hired to kill him? Was there anyone who would mourn his demise, out here in the middle of nowhere?
"I'm not by nature a killer," said Krenski. "But perhaps I did the world, as well as you, a favor just now."
Jason heard a noise behind him. He grabbed the Luger from the ground and whirled around.
"Boss! It's me!"
"Andoni!"
The big man was standing there, tears in his eyes, his donkey behind him. He nodded at Krenski.
"Boss... I hear a shot..." Then Andoni saw the blood on Jason's jacket. "You wounded!"
He stripped Jason's jacket off and whistled.
"You damn lucky, boss." He took out his knife and cut some strips from Jason's shirttail, soaked them in liquid from his canteen, then expertly applied the cloth to the wound. Jason winced.
Then Andoni offered Jason the canteen. "Ouzo... gasoline for the motor."
Jason took a swallow of the harsh liquor and coughed.
He offered the canteen to Krenski, who shook his head.
"Good stuff, eh, boss?" Andoni grinned. "Best damn medicine in the world."
"Especially for surgery," Jason agreed. "Anesthetize the patient and sterilize the wound all with ouzo—great!"
He found himself inordinately glad to see the big man again.
"Look, boss, you got to let Andoni take you now. No more fool around, okay? Andoni take you to Simonopetra."
Krenski spoke up, saying, "If I may, I will go with you."
"Why?" asked Jason.
"I will explain as we go."
They set off together, and Krenski talked: Some of the story was familiar to Jason, but most of it was not. .
"For me, the scrolls—from the beginning, from the first time I saw them—became an obsession, the very core of my life. As Gogol wrote, 'And from that day forth, everything was, as it were, changed and appeared in a different light to him...'" He smiled ruefully.
"I met Sister Eugenia when I was young. We've been friends ever since, even after she went to the nunnery at Tinos. You know my name because her father gave the scrolls to me to translate—until he took them away and declared them blasphemous. Even I haven't read them all. That's why I've followed you and Andoni, knowing that he was once a monk here at Simonopetra and would know where such things might be kept."
As they walked along, they were aware that their presence was a disturbance to the idyllic peace of the forest; birds hushed their songs, lizards scurried into the underbrush, and occasionally a wild dog's mournful howl could be heard.
Jason said, "I'm not sure that the scrolls are here at al. At Vatopedi, I happened upon scrolls in their translating room that I'm almost sure were what we're looking for, But dammit, they caught me and there's no chance of my ever getting near them again."
"Ah, yes, the scrolls of Vatopedi. Don't feel badly; they're fake."
"Fake?"
"A doctored version that alters the story to coincide with accepted doctrine. I've seen the originals. Remember, I was the second man to see them. Lascaris was the first. Except for the author, of course."
"And the author was?"
He hesitated, almost apologetically, and said, "The Apostle John."
"How much of the story of Lael do you know?"
"About three-quarters, I would guess. How much did Eugenia tell you?"
Jason told him where the Sister's tale had left off.
“Then, while I know more than you, neither of us knows the end, and we shall not know it until we find the real scrolls.'' He pounded one hand into the palm of the other. "I know they're in Simonopetra! Constantine must have them with him right now. He'd never let them go, nor would he destroy them. You see, you were getting too hot on the trail."
"But how do you know those scrolls at Vatopedi are fake?" Jason asked. "Have you seen them?"
"I'll explain it all," said Krenski. And he started telling how, after Lascaris made off with the last part of the scrolls before the translation had been completed, Krenski became obsessed with the need to find out the rest of the story, so he left for Rome and visited the Vatican. Young and naive, he thought the Catholic Church would assist him in obtaining more information.
"How wrong I was! The cardinal I talked to promised to help me—a man named Tobin—and let me do research with the precious books of the Vatican Library. When I went back to my hotel to wait for the phone call Cardinal Tobin would make after authorization had cleared, someone tried to kill me "
“Who?” asked Jason
“God only knows.. But I managed to club him senseless. As far as I know, the only person who knew I was staying at that hotel was Cardinal Tobin."
Krenski then fled from Rome and went to Yugoslavia with the help of friends. He assumed that if the Vatican was after him, then they surely knew about the existence of the scrolls from other sources. He felt that he had to go back to Izmir at any cost and try to find the scrolls so that he could translate the ending.
"I was afraid for my life, so I took another name and avoided appearing anyplace where I might be recognized. Then I found out that Lascaris had disappeared, and I wasn't able to get any information about where he'd gone."
When a sailor was murdered in the hotel room next to his, Krenski felt sure that it had been a mistake on the part of the killer, for when he had checked into the seedy hotel, that room had been assigned to him. Seeing that it was a room with three bunks, Krenski had offered to pay extra for more private accommodations. It was possible that the killer did not know about the change and had murdered the unlucky drunken sailor who'd been given the bed Krenski had rejected.
Having figured out this probability, he placed his passport surreptitiously on the dead man's body and slipped away. To the authorities, it appeared as if Paul Krenski had been the murder victim, and he had no doubt that the killer's employers would be satisfied by this news and he'd be off the hook.
"Phillips Taylor—yes, the psuedo-vice-consul who involved you in all this—he managed to get me a stolen passport and I hitched my way to Greece. I met people and made some friends, and finally I learned that Lascaris was living on the Mount Athos peninsula as a monk. I went to Thessaloniki and, by working at various jobs—waiter, bus driver, and guide for a tourist office—I kept track of Lascaris and learned a lot about the religious community of Mount Athos as a whole. The gossip was that the abbot of Vatopedi, Constantine, was at odds with the Vatican, that a cold war existed between Constantine, who was head of the richest and most important monastery on Mount Athos, and Rome."
As time went on, Krenski gleaned much information about the political climate of the clerical enclave, but very little about the scrolls. Lascaris himself, Krenski never saw again. First the old man was lost in the vast confines of Vatopedi, in the multitude of other monks. Then Krenski heard that Lascaris had been condemned by Constantine and was hiding out in a skete somewhere in the wilds of the mountain itself. By the time Krenski learned the exact location of the hideout, it was reported that Lascaris had left Mount Athos and returned to Izmir.
"I contacted my old love, Eugenia. She told me she thought the scrolls had been destroyed—that her father had burned the photographs of the translations as well as the originals."
Knowing that Lascaris had spent a lifetime cosseting those scrolls, when Krenski recalled how avidly interested Lascaris had been during the laborious translation, he simply could not accept Eugenia's story. Then, when he learned that she had embraced the Church as a nun and was at Tinos, forever lost to him as a possible wife he became even more compulsive about the story of Lael. He suddenly saw a way to win the confidence of both the woman he loved and the people who would know the most about the scrolls; he would become a monk on Mount Athos. Eugenia would then reveal the truth and he might be able to infiltrate the powerful Vatopedi security that Abbot Constantine was building up.
“Things went along very well, surprisingly well, and I couldn't believe my luck. When I finally 'discovered' the scrolls in the same silver chest that you mentioned, I soon realized why I'd made such phenomenal progress. They were fake."
Jason said, "Then they actually wanted you to find them. Wanted both of us to find them?"
"Exactly."
"But why?"
"Because we want to know the ending, right? And at the end of the bogus scrolls, John the Apostle abruptly breaks into the story saying that he had just recovered from a serious illness that has kept him in a hallucinatory state for six months. During that time, he confesses, he made up the scrolls out of whole cloth based on nothing more than his disturbed imagination. He acknowledges that the forces of evil gained power over him and manipulated him into writing the blasphemies, and that he had decided to burn the scrolls and to terminate his life, and he begs forgiveness of God, Jesus, and Mary. Period! And so ends the Ephesus story and the threat to the Church."
Jason thought for a moment, then said, "Supposing it's true, this business about John being deranged when he wrote them?"
KrenSki shook his head.
“The codicil is an obvious forgery. Whoever wrote it was clever and erudite, but he showed inconsistencies in style and actual errors in the Aramaic that aren't in the first part. Even the papyri themselves have a subtle difference in texture, although an excellent job was done in making them appear ancient. No, it was ordered by Constantine or someone else, higher up. A perfect way to squash the story of Lael that was beginning to leak out and threaten the Church."
Krenski went on to tell Jason that he had been in touch with Eugenia and had learned of Jason's visit to her. She'd told him that she was sure Jason would go to Mount Athos, so Krenski kept the Ouranopolis departures under surveillance. It wasn't difficult to spot Jason from Eugenia's good description, and follow him, and being dressed as a monk made it easier to get around. It was reasonable to suppose that the other man he saw tailing Jason might be a hired assassin, so he stayed behind and managed to save his life.
"But why?" Jason asked. "Why risk your life to save mine?"
Krenski smiled. "I was in no danger. That killer had no idea that anyone would be following him. Anyway, we're obviously both after the same thing. And I need help. I figured you and Andoni might have some information that I didn't." He looked over at Andoni and said, "You grew up in Simonopetra, didn't you, Andoni? You must know that place pretty well."
Andoni nodded. "That right."
"But," Jason protested, "Andoni, you were so young. They wouldn't have told you where the true treasures were hidden."
Andoni laughed. They no tell me, but I know! One day I s'pose to be sweeping chapel floor. I get tired, boss, so I curl up on bench, go to sleep. Then I hear noise, I wake up, I see... oh, what I see!"
"What exactly did you see?" 'asked Krenski, his eyes glittering eagerly.
"I see two monks. They go right past me, they don' see me. They go to take something to put it away, put in hiding place. When they open, I see gold, all kind of gold!"
“But did you see scrolls?" demanded Krenski.
“I see gold cups and gold chains and gold crucifix and gold“
"But did you see a silver box?" Krenski stopped walking and indicated the size with his hands. "About so big?"
But Andoni shrugged. "I see so much gold I blind to silver. But if it valuable, it there."
"And where in the chapel is it hidden?"
"I show you, boss, I show you!"
And they set off once again for Simonopetra . . . only faster.
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