Jeffrey Siger - An Aegean Prophecy

He dialed and waited for the answering machine to pick up.

‘Hello, office of the protos.’

Andreas was surprised to hear a live voice. ‘Hello, is the Protos available? It’s Chief Inspector Kaldis.’

‘Chief Inspector, as I’m sure you understand, the Protos is terribly busy this week. I’ve put you at the top of his list and I’m certain he will call you back as soon as he has time. And I can assure you that your repeated calls insisting he call you back immediately will not get you a faster reply. Kalo Paska. Goodbye.’

Andreas held a dead phone up to Maggie. ‘He didn’t even wait for me to say goodbye. Just gave me Easter wishes and hung up. Arrogant son of a bitch.’

‘You should be used to that by now. Everybody’s available to you when they need you and don’t want to know you once you’ve fixed their problem. You remind them of what went wrong.’

‘Well, if he thought that was a problem, wait until he sees this.’ Andreas wrote something out in longhand across Vassilis’ list of monks. ‘Here, fax this to the Protos. And mark it personal so that everyone who touches it reads it.’ If the Protos wanted to dodge Andreas’ phone calls that was his privilege, but to Andreas’ way of thinking the Protos did so at his peril. There was no danger posed by the Russians; they weren’t involved in these intrigues. The Protos’ problems were in his own backyard, so if he wouldn’t take Andreas’ calls he damn well better pray no Judas had access to his fax machine.

Maggie took the paper from Andreas and read it out loud. ‘“Your Holiness, I obtained this list from our mutual friend. It’s supposed to name all the monks serving in one of your monasteries. Please check the list to make sure no one is missing and call me. Thank you. Respectfully, Andreas Kaldis.”’

Maggie looked at Andreas. ‘I like it. Simple, courteous, innocuous, just the sort of friendly note you’d expect if someone were trying to tell you, “Do you happen to know that a notorious, long-thought-dead war criminal is living in your midst?”’

Andreas smiled. ‘Let’s see what this gets us.’

Fifteen minutes later Maggie buzzed Andreas on the intercom. ‘It’s the minister.’

‘Hello, Kaldis here.’

‘Andreas! How are you?’ The voice was all joy and light.

‘Fine, Minister, and you?’

‘Great, really great. I’ve been meaning to call you, to thank you for your assistance on that Patmos monk thing.’

Andreas wondered how this guy could so easily believe his own PR. ‘Glad to have been of help.’

‘I really can’t thank you enough for closing this case so quickly.’

Something’s coming. ‘No need to thank me, Minister, it’s my job. Besides, it’s not closed. There’s a major new development.’

‘ Yes, it is closed! ‘ The tone was that of a mercurial temper tantrum by an insecure bureaucrat.

Andreas was used to that. He also was used to pushing back. ‘Sorry, Minister, it’s not over.’

There was a decided pause on the other end of the line. Andreas assumed it was so the minister could give thought to all the threats he wanted to make but knew better than to voice. The bottom line was he needed Andreas more than Andreas needed him. And both men knew it.

‘Andreas, let’s be reasonable. You caught the killers. Everyone, and I mean everyone, is overjoyed at your triumph. You’re even getting a raise. The prime minister himself just called to tell me how much he appreciated your work. There is no reason to go on.’

‘Did he tell you about the fax?’

Pause. ‘Andreas, sometimes you can be a real pain in the ass.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Yes, he did. Look, no one is going to help you on this. Absolutely no one. You will get no help from the ministry, the press, the church — certainly none from the church. You are shut down on this, officially and unofficially.’ He paused. ‘The church will deal with this problem in its own way. This cannot come out. It benefits no one and destroys many good people who were deceived by this… well, you know what I’m talking about.’

‘Yes, I do.’ Andreas was fuming; he’d heard this sort of honey-coated cover-up crap many times before. ‘Let’s cut to the chase, Spiro. Is there anything I can say to change your mind?’

‘I’m sorry, Andreas, no. It’s really out of our hands. Let us just accept it. Consider it the internal problem of another country, and none of our concern.’

‘But it’s our church.’

‘And we must protect it.’

‘From whom?’

‘Andreas, this is going nowhere. We both know it.’

Andreas let out a deep breath. ‘Get some balls’ was what he wanted to say. The minister wasn’t really a bad guy, just an ass-kisser forever afraid of losing status in the eyes of his social crowd. In other words, he did as he was told to keep his job. But, to be fair, in this instance it was pretty clear to Andreas that it wouldn’t matter if a huge pair of steel arhidia magically appeared. Someone above him would cut them off for sure. Andreas said goodbye and hung up.

‘It’s out of our hands.’ That was the phrase the minister used. Poor bastard doesn’t even realize the irony of what he’d said. It’s not ‘out of our hands.’ It is, as Vassilis wrote in the two-line note he carried to his death: Prepare, for the time is in their hands.

Greece’s Cycladic Aegean island of Mykonos was only twenty-five minutes by plane from Athens. About one and one half times the size of Manhattan, Mykonos had more than three times the population of Patmos and the reputation for an in-season, 24/7 party lifestyle unmatched in the world. In other words, Mykonos was about the last place you’d go to find a monk. Which was exactly why Kouros chose to spend his unexpected Easter holiday there. He still had buddies on the island from his rookie cop days, and that meant places to stay for free.

In winter Mykonos was a sleepy island village with virtually no tourists, no business, few open bars, fewer restaurants, and no clubs. But come Easter Week everything changed. The old town came to life, like the red and yellow springtime poppies bursting out all over Mykonos hillsides. It seemed that every world-class partier in the know and every Greek who could find a place to stay was on Mykonos from Thursday through Monday of Easter Week. But this taste of the coming mid-summer craziness was short lived. If you didn’t catch the action that weekend come back in June, because the island was back in hibernation come Tuesday.

It was a particularly warm weekend for April and that meant time on the beach; maybe not in the water quite yet, but definitely on the beach. Kouros was face down on a towel, thinking of nothing but the naked bodies lying not too far away when he heard his phone.

‘Let me guess, it’s my dream come true.’

‘I sure as hell hope not for your sake.’

‘What’s up, Chief?’

‘Honestly, nothing. I mean nothing we can do anything about. I’m just calling because you’re the only one I can bitch to.’

‘I guess that means Maggie won’t listen.’

‘Her exact words were, “I told you so.”’

‘Oh boy.’

‘Let me share with you my most recent example of why police work is so fulfilling.’

‘Uh, Chief, are you sure you want to do this over a cell phone?’

‘I think the appropriate line is found in a famous American movie. “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”’

‘Thank you too, dear, but still, don’t you think-’

‘Yianni, unless we’re going back to the days of runners carrying messages from lips to ears — and that Marathon sucker Pheidippides died anyway — we’ll just have to risk it at times. Besides, if what I’m about to tell you gets out, it won’t matter anyway. I’ve been told no one will pursue it.’