Neil Olson - The Icon

“You think he was involved in the theft?”

“I fear we must assume it.” Fotis sighed, expressing the effort this was costing him. “Of course, he might have other reasons. Some of these Russians have only a tenuous legal status in America.”

“Anton’s an illegal?”

“I do not say it is so, only that it might be. Yet in such a case, I would still expect him to contact me, which he has failed to do.”

“He always struck me as very loyal,” Matthew prodded, his steady gaze fixed on the old man’s face. “And not very inventive.”

“Ah, there is more to that one than meets the eye. He hides it well. But if he was involved, I doubt that it was his idea.”

“Agreed. Whose, then?”

Fotis shrugged and reached for the heavy slab of bread.

“That’s it,” Matthew shot back. “A shrug? You have no theories?”

“What would you have me say?”

“You expect me to believe that you have no idea at all-”

“Spit it out, you pup.” The old man dropped the bread, working himself up to a good, regal rage. “I won’t be interrogated like this in my own home. You think I don’t know about interrogations? I’ve conducted hundreds. You think I’m behind this.”

There was a small flinch, far less than Fotis had anticipated.

“I do not say it is so,” the boy mocked him quietly, “only that it might be.”

Bravo. This was trouble, but Fotis could not help admiring the young man’s cool. He was growing. He might prove good at this business, after all. The old man tacked again.

“Andreas.”

“What about him?”

“Forgive me, it’s only that I’m tired. I did not hear him speaking through you at first.”

“You know, it’s funny.” Matthew picked the bread up off the footrest and put it back on the tray. “Whenever one of you gets into a tight spot, you always invoke the other. As if you’re each other’s evil twin. Nothing’s ever your fault, nothing’s ever his fault. It’s always the other guy.”

“Perhaps we’ve forgotten which of us is which.”

“You’ve certainly forgotten which of you did what. Eat that bread, I don’t want Taki angry with me.”

The old man bent to obey, glad of the excuse to stay silent.

“These are my own questions,” Matthew continued. “My grandfather has fed me a lot of stories, but no more than you. Maybe you both believe your own versions, I can’t say. Right now, I don’t trust either one of you.”

Good, Fotis thought. He would accept even odds. The bread was soft and pleasant on his tongue. He placed it back on the dish, swallowing carefully.

“I do not know where Anton is, or what he is doing.” That was more or less true. “With him missing, and with Nicholas in the hospital, I have no resources of the kind I can trust. I will have to see to it myself when I am more fully recovered.”

“It doesn’t sound like you could trust the resources you had. You’re so damn careful, how could you hire a man so capable of betraying you?”

“Better to ask, how could I not? Men who will always be loyal are men who will never think for themselves. They are useful only up to a point.” He took another sip of the cooling coffee.

“Now, men who will expand upon your instructions, take risks, trust their own judgment, these are the truly useful men. And they are also, always, men of ambition, who will one day look out for themselves. This is natural.”

“So how can you control them?”

“Limit their opportunities for mischief. Have other, less inventive men watch over them. Dismiss them, eventually. I was not careful enough with Anton. Too slow.”

“You expected trouble.”

“In time, my boy, I expect trouble from every man.”

“Which kind of man is my Papou?”

“Andreas. The best. The best and the most rare, both loyal and ruthless, and more clever than the devil. Of course, even he proved untrustworthy in the end.”

“Why did you tell me he was called the Snake?”

Fotis put his lips to the cup again, but there were only the muddy grounds remaining. No sense in denial, the boy knew too much. It only remained to learn just how much.

“That was unkind. Perhaps I was trying to punish him for giving that name to me.”

“Maybe you didn’t want to admit that it was your idea to trade the icon to the Germans.”

“My idea? No, it was Müller’s. A German officer. They were all thieves by the end, worse than the Italians. Müller’s particular obsession was religious art, and he had somehow learned about the icon. Maybe he knew about it all along. The Nazis had a great fascination with the mystical, as I’m sure you know.”

“Go on,” Matthew said, impatient.

“I confess we had an open channel of communication with the Germans, even as we fought them. Müller approached me, suggested a trade. I was appalled, but we needed weapons, so I shared the idea with Andreas, my most trusted man. He convinced me we should do it. He came up with the plan. Can you imagine me burning a church, paidemou?”

Matthew said nothing, uncertainty clouding his expression. Fotis pressed on.

“No, it required an atheist to execute such a design. His brother died in that fire.”

“That’s not the same thing as his killing him.”

“He let him run into a burning building, maybe even encouraged him. You know, they were only half brothers, they never liked each other.”

“He grieves for that brother.”

“The priest may have been collaborating with the Germans, and your grandfather was not a forgiving man. Not a man for half-measures, either.”

“It doesn’t wash, Fotis.”

“I grow weary. Perhaps we can end the interrogation for today and let the prisoner rest.”

“All your restitching now can’t make truth out of the story you told me in New York,” the boy insisted, real anger in his voice now. “It was an ugly story, and ten times uglier a lie.”

“Not a lie, an exaggeration. A manipulation, I confess, but rooted in truth. You must see it. How could it have been my plan, to burn a church, to sell an object of such holy love and beauty to the enemy? That is not me. You do see it, I know that you do. The icon belonged back in Greece. You had the ability to influence that decision, but you needed a push. I gave it to you. In the process I oversimplified. I did wrong, but not the kind of wrong you accuse me of.”

He sat back, exhausted by the volley of words. The boy was not convinced, he could see, but perhaps he had reintroduced some doubt.

“And I suppose,” Matthew said slowly, “that the scheme with Father Tomas wasn’t your idea either.”

“Tomas is…a complicated fellow. But he has, in fact, represented the Greek church many times. I had no reason to doubt him.”

“He didn’t cough up nine hundred grand. That was your money.”

“The church was to refund me.”

“And you accepted that?”

“It’s common practice. Their bureaucracy moves slowly; it requires committed souls to force the issue. Tomas clearly over-stepped his authority, but the church would have made good on most of the cost. The rest would be my gift to them. It was a risk, but I was comfortable with it.”

The words rolled smoothly off his tongue, bits of truth spread out to cover the lies. In fact, the Snake had half convinced himself, before it all fell out, that he did mean to give the icon to the church. Eventually, when he had derived whatever good from it there was to get. He’d had the fake theft in the back of his mind even then, but it was not until Nicholas-loyal boy-had told him about this collector del Carros that Fotis realized he must move. Del Carros was planning some action with Nicholas and Anton’s former boss, a Russian named Karov. Anton and maybe Nicholas, too, were still in Karov’s pocket, and if del Carros had enough money, the Russians would betray him. Fotis used their greed against them. He paid them to steal the icon from him before they did it anyway for the South American, adding a hidden twist or two of his own. Dangerous, but it had worked, all except the wound to poor Nicholas, whom Fotis had not quite trusted enough to let in on the plan. Anton and the others Karov supplied were supposed to be out of the house well before Nicholas returned from dropping Fotis at the airport, but they must have been slow, and the dear, stupid boy had obviously tried to stop them.