Neil Olson - The Icon

At the far end of the aisle, the sound of the fire grew louder, and he could see black smoke rolling down the stairway. The door above was open. Thrown aside by someone making an escape? Covering his mouth, the captain approached more closely, bent nearly to the ground: blood, dark pools in the shadowy lantern light, on several of the worn steps. The acrid smell was thickening. He would not be able to stay long. Elias searched the other aisles as swiftly as he could, and quickly found what he’d most feared.

In the space nearest the south wall, where the oldest bones lay, he saw a bunched black cassock on the floor. He put the lantern down carefully, his movements slowed, breathing the poisonous air freely now, and knelt beside his brother. He rolled the body over, and his right hand came away wet with blood from a wound in the back. The face, as the light found it, was far too pale, the eyes glazed, the mouth a pained rictus, and Elias reflexively covered it with his free hand. It required a long, deep breath before he could look again. There, an awful, jagged wound in the throat, around the larynx. Designed not necessarily to kill, but to silence the victim instantly. The captain knew that particular wound well. He had inflicted it a few times himself, had taught its use to his young disciple. He thought again of the strange look Kosta had given him earlier, and read new possibilities into it.

The aching grief welling up within him felt all out of proportion to the affection he had shown Mikalis in life. They had different mothers, had chosen different paths, believed different things. They were not close, except in the instinctive way that blood sometimes demanded. Elias would have died to protect Mikalis, yet could not swear that he loved him. Died to protect him; yet had he not let him escape his grasp, race to his death? The captain closed his eyes, tried to steady himself once more. Knife was better than fire, surely. The job had been mishandled, though; he’d not died at once but managed to crawl down here. Bled to death, a martyr to a painting.

His hands shook with rage, but the rage only masked a withering self-judgment. He could blame the Snake and Müller for dreaming up the trade, but he could not blame them for his part in it. The actual plan was his alone. The icon meant nothing to him, weapons were what mattered; but it had all gone wrong now. One life had been lost already, and more would follow if he could not discover who exactly had betrayed the dirty scheme, if he could not find a way to sew this ugly business back together. If he could blame Müller, there might be a righteousness to his anger. Yet he knew that the Prince had been as surprised as himself to find the church ablaze, and he certainly would not have stayed around to engage the andartes if he had the icon-he’d be back in Ioannina by now, with his loot. The captain looked at his brother’s face once more. It wasn’t a German who had stabbed Mikalis. No, the betrayal lay much closer.

Elias slipped the small gold cross and chain from around the priest’s neck and placed them in his pocket. There was nothing else of value on the body. Grabbing hold under the armpits, pillowing the limp head against his leg, the captain dragged Mikalis to a corner of the crypt, nearer the tunnel exit. There, he arranged the body as respectfully as possible, placing his kerchief over the face, only noticing now the dark blisters on the hands, the burned and frayed bottom of the cassock. The priest had fought both flame and wounds to crawl down here and die among his ancestors. The captain placed two fingers on the cold forehead in a sort of benediction, but no words came. Next, he retrieved the lantern, doused the flame, and returned it to its place. Then, dizzy from the invisible fumes, twice as blind as when he had entered, Elias made his way back out into the night.

The glow from the church lit the valley, the fire reaching its apex. Elias stuffed his hands in his pockets, chin down, eyes alert, and slipped into the village. A small crowd had gathered at the base of the lane to the churchyard, women and children, buckets in hand. Four German soldiers prevented their progress. Light from the flames above caught the sentries’ helmets and young faces, and Elias could see that they were edgy and ready to shoot the first fool bold enough to step forward. Müller would not want the andartes to escape by slipping into the crowd, pretending to be part of the fire brigade, and he would let the house of God burn to its foundation. Was that a clue? If there was a chance the icon was still in the church, would the German not have every adult and child, even his own men, throwing water on the flames? What had he seen before the smoke drove him out of the sanctuary? Had the Holy Mother been removed before the fire, and did the Prince know it? If Müller thought the icon was still intact, somewhere, then anything was possible.

Elias slid around the group unnoticed. His only clue was Kosta, and he had to make a choice now: the house or the shop? If the boy had escaped the fire, and if the captain’s fears were true, then Kosta would not lead pursuers to his own home. The shop, then. Elias pushed on toward the heart of the village, using the crooked back streets. At the top of a lane the square came into sight, where another crowd was gathered. This one seemed dominated by helmeted figures and shouted commands. A number of people stood together by Tzamakis’ tavern, under guard. Village elders. Glykeria’s father was there, but Elias did not see Kosta’s father, Stamatis Mavroudas, among them.

The Mavroudas shop faced the square, but the captain had no intention of trying the front door. Instead, he slid into an alley just wide enough for a man, invisible in the night shadows. Within a few yards the space widened into a small court, four meters square, and he was before the back door. The curtains were drawn on a tiny window, but Elias could make out candlelight behind them. He slipped his pistol from his belt and gently pressed his ear to the door. Only silence at first, but a minute’s patience was rewarded by a raised voice, questioning, angry. Elias knew the voice.

Stepping to the side of the door, he rapped hard upon it. Silence once more.

“Who’s there?” a weak voice asked, finally. The old man, Stamatis.

Elias merely rapped again.

The bolt slid aside within, and the door opened a hand’s breadth. Mavroudas looked flushed and frightened. “What do you want?”

Elias looked the man in the eye but directed his words past him, into the room.

“Fotis, it’s me.”

There was a telling pause. Then the candle was covered, the door pulled wider, and Elias stepped inside. The door thumped shut behind him, the candle leaped back to life as a large bowl was lifted up, and the familiar figure of his commander stood by the table. Huge black mustache, hawklike nose, somber eyes in a long, sloping forehead. Fotis always conveyed a sense of calm, but the captain could see tension etched in the forehead and the jawline. The Snake was angry.

“You shouldn’t use my name.”

Elias ignored the comment. Stamatis knew them both.

“What are you doing here?” Elias demanded. It was not the tone to take with a superior, but he didn’t care. Fotis should have been with the team sent to retrieve the guns, simultaneously with Müller’s removing the icon. Elias, the only one among the guerrillas who knew where the Mother was hidden, had insisted on assigning roles. He’d never forgotten the covetous way Fotis had admired the work years before, stroking the cypress panels as he would a lover. He wanted the Snake nowhere near the church when the confiscation occurred, and leading the team that seized the guns was an honor Fotis could not refuse without revealing some ulterior motive for the whole scheme. The captain had thought it all through. A false message would get Mikalis out of the church; the Germans guarding the wrecked villa where the weapons were stored-three or four men in Müller’s pay-would fire some rounds at the andartes and withdraw. Each side would get what it wanted, and only the Prince, the Snake, and the captain would know what happened.