Thomas Greanias - The 34th Degree

“You’ve got to come with us,” she begged him. “If you don’t, what will I tell them in Cairo?”

“What will you say?” repeated Stavros. He started to sing an old klephtic song from the days of the War of Independence against the Turks: “If our comrades ask you any questions about me, Don’t say I stopped a bullet, don’t say I was unlucky, Just tell them I got married In the sad lands overseas… With a big flat stone for a mother-in-law, New pebble brothers, and the black earth for my bride.”

Erin realized there was nothing left to say, so she gave Stavros a big hug, turned around, and dove over the side of the caique into the water, waiting for Chris to follow. He landed beside her with a splash, his arms locked around the life preserver.

Erin held up the signal ball. There on the horizon, visible now and then through the curtain of clouds in the moonlight, was the Cherub, like a great gray whale sitting atop a wave.

Stavros, meanwhile, had started the caique’s engine and was slowly motoring away.

Treading in the wake of the caique, Erin watched the kapetanios dissolve into the night, a tragic figure whose future, she realized, was about as dim as Greece’s at this point, no matter who won the war.

It was the middle of the night on the island of Corfu, and Aphrodite lay awake in her bed at the Achillion. A warm breeze off the sea blew through the open windows, and the curtains rose with a flutter and a ripple, casting wicked shadows across the moonlit floor. It seemed as if the long, twisted fingers of a giant claw were reaching across the covers of her bed to grab her, then retracting whenever the wind died.

She rolled over and looked at the grandfather clock in the corner of the room. It was just after three. She wanted to make sure the house staff was asleep before she went downstairs to the Baron’s study. That was where he kept the Maranatha text, she had concluded, the same text Christos had asked her about in Athens and which the monk Philip had told her she must destroy.

She had no choice, for now she knew what it was Christos had been looking for in Athens and what it was she had failed to tell him. If the text wasn’t in her father’s safe in Athens, it had to be here at the Achillion. Why else had the Baron forbidden her from ever revealing the Achillion as his residence to anybody, even her parents, whose last days were filled with anxiety whenever she disappeared from Athens for weeks at a time? Why else was she forbidden to enter the study downstairs? What else could the Baron be hiding that was more valuable than all his other art treasures? It had to be the Maranatha text.

Yes, she told herself, earlier that afternoon she had been ready to die. But now, thanks to Philip, she wanted to live a little longer, if only to help the Allies. May God only forgive me, she thought, for my failure to tell Christos about the Achillion in Athens for fear of the Baron.

She sat up in bed and looked around the room. It was a creepy room, she decided, her eyes darting about. Just beyond the foot of the bed was the wardrobe where the Baron had hanged Karl the week before. Had it been only a week? Several times since then, she had woken up from her sleep, believing she heard a knocking sound coming from inside, as if Karl were still there and wanted to come out. She also had the feeling that she was being watched and at times found her eyes unconsciously drifting back to the eerie portrait of Elizabeth of Austria staring down at her from above the headboard.

She would have passed off these feelings as flights of imagination if not for the indifference with which the staff had treated her since she returned from her evening swim. The Baron was nowhere to be seen, and when she asked where he was, nobody would say. Franz, Peter, Helga-everybody was behaving differently. Then there was the new guest, that hideous little man they called Professor Xaptz. It was as if something sinister were afoot within the palace, a conspiracy in which they were all involved.

She slipped out of bed, put on her robe, and opened the bedroom door. The palace was quiet, but the landing outside was dark, and it was a long way down the stairs to the Baron’s study.

Gathering her courage, she crossed the landing and softly descended the grand staircase. She had reached the sixth step when she stopped. What if the text wasn’t there, either? What if it was in Berlin? She pushed the thought out of her mind and continued down the stairs.

She reached the foyer on the first floor and looked around. Then she started down the long corridor toward the study near the end of the hall. About twenty feet before she reached the door, she could see that it was open and a light was on. In her mind she rehearsed her speech if she was caught. She would say she was worried about Ludwig and had gone down to the study to see if he was there.

As she approached the open door, she remembered how she’d once seen Ludwig and several guests walk into the study, but only he walked out. Another time three guests walked out of the study whom she’d never seen walk in. But the only door to the study was the one before her. At least, it was the only one she was aware of.

Standing in the open doorway, she looked inside.

Nobody was in the study.

She crossed the floor toward Ludwig’s desk and stood before the large painting of King Ludwig II of Bavaria on the wall. Something about the picture bothered her, something she couldn’t put her finger on. It was the same eerie feeling she had lying in bed upstairs beneath the brooding eyes of Empress Elizabeth of Austria.

She slowly turned to survey the rest of the room, taking in the window overlooking the gardens, the heavy drapes, bookshelves that lined the walls, and…a glass case standing in the corner.

Moving toward the case, seemingly tugged by some invisible cord, she could see the ragged fragment of the papyrus beneath the glass. It had been mounted flat, pressed between two other sheets of glass. She stood there in silence, beholding the document that men had killed one another to possess.

She lowered her face to the glass to see if she could read the words scrawled across the papyrus. A few phrases were familiar to her, but classical Greek differed too much from modern Greek for her to comprehend the contents. Unfortunately, she would have to destroy the text without knowing exactly what it said.

Placing her hands on the glass lid of the case, she tried to lift it off. But it was sealed shut, and she could see no latch or hinge. The only way to remove the text would be to break the glass. The problem was how to do that without making too much noise and arousing attention.

She looked around and spotted a bronze bust of Achilles on a shelf, much like the statue outside in the gardens but smaller in scale. It was heavy enough that she had to use both hands to lift it from the shelf and carry it over to the glass case. Cradling the bust in one arm, she lifted the bottom of one of the heavy drapes from the nearby window and spread it across the top of the case. Slowly, she eased the bust onto the cloth cushion until it rested almost entirely on its own weight. As soon as she heard the first crackle of glass, she lifted the bust before it could plunge straight through and placed it back on its shelf. She returned to the glass case, pressed her hand down on the curtain draped over it, and punched down the shards of glass, cringing when they shattered against the glass-plated text and made some noise.

She pulled the curtain aside and dipped her hands into the case, carefully brushing aside the broken glass until she could get a grip on the text. Her fingers grasped the corner, and she lifted it up, the glass from the case sliding off. As she eased the plate out of the case, she became aware of a red streak dribbling down her arm. She then saw the cut on her forearm and suppressed a cry.