Chris Kuzneski - The Lost Throne

Smiling at the scene, Payne glanced at his screen and was surprised by the summary.

Seventeen missed calls. Three voice mails. One text message.

Damn. Something was wrong.

All of his friends knew he was a reluctant cell phone user, only carrying it for emergencies. Therefore getting seventeen calls was a big deal. Especially in one day.

Worried, he clicked through his options until he reached the list of missed calls. He scrolled through the numbers, looking for the source, but the same message appeared over and over.

Restricted .

Seventeen calls, seventeen restricted numbers.

“Shit,” he mumbled to himself, realizing what that meant. It was probably the government.

They were the masters of the blocked call. Always trying to conceal their identity.

The only question was, who? Payne had done consulting work for the Pentagon and every branch of the armed service, not to mention the FBI, CIA, and NSA. Of course, if those agencies were trying to reach him, they wouldn’t call seventeen times. They’d stalk him quietly and throw him into the back of a white van.

No, if he had to guess, he would have said the Air Force.

Not only was MacDill an Air Force base, it had also paid for his trip to Florida. Maybe the generals wanted to get one more lecture out of him before he returned home.

“What’s up?” Jones asked as he left the restroom. “Did your phone break again?”

“I wish. I had seventeen missed calls. All of them blocked.”

“Fucking government.”

“What about you? Any calls?”

Jones checked his phone. “Nope. Nada .”

“That’s strange.”

“Tell me about it. I’m used to booty calls, day and night.”

He laughed. “I was referring to MacDill, not McLovin.”

“What time did they start?”

Payne scrolled through his screen. “Let’s see. First call was 3:59 A.M. Damn. Maybe my cell phone woke me after all. I could’ve sworn it was the room phone.”

“Any messages?”

He nodded. “Three voice, one text.”

“Start with the text. You can read it now.”

The device looked tiny in his massive hands, yet somehow Payne clicked the appropriate buttons, dancing from screen to screen. The text was tough to read in the Florida sun, forcing him to shield the glare. But in time, he was able to read the message.

It was straightforward and unsigned.

The type of message that no one wants to receive.

This is not a prank. Life or death. Please call at once.

4

The stranger stood on the edge of the cliff and gasped at what he saw. Massive rock pillars sprang out of the earth like giant stone fingers, each of them rising several hundred feet from the valley below. Yet somehow the natural beauty of the scenery paled in comparison with the architectural wonder of Metéora, a site that hovered in the heavens like the throne of God.

He heard footsteps behind him but refused to shift his gaze from the Monastery of the Holy Trinity as the sun slipped behind the Pindus Mountains to the west.

Marcus Andropoulos, the man who approached, spoke with a local accent. “The monks who built this place climbed the rock with their bare hands, then refused to leave until construction was finished. They stayed on top for many months, lifting supplies by rope during the day and sleeping in a cave at night.”

The stranger said nothing, still admiring the view.

Andropoulos stepped closer, tentative. “Eventually, they built retractable wooden ladders that reached the crops they had planted in the fields below. Grapes, corn, potatoes. They even had sheep and cattle.”

The stranger tried to picture the ladders. They must have stretched for a quarter of a mile.

“I don’t believe we’ve met,” said the Greek. “My name is Marcus Andropoulos.”

“Nick Dial,” he said over his shoulder.

“You’re an American, no? Are you a tourist?”

Dial shook his head. “What does Metéora mean?”

“It is a local word. It means ‘suspended in air.’ Originally there were twenty-four monasteries on the surrounding peaks. Many were destroyed during World War Two. Now only six remain.”

“How old is this one?”

“Fifteenth-century,” he answered, still trying to figure out who Dial was and why he was there. “Are you with the media?”

Dial laughed. “Definitely not. I can’t stand those guys.”

Andropoulos paused, thinking things through. If Dial wasn’t a journalist, how did he get past all the officers on the main road? “In that case, I think you need to leave.”

“Because I hate the media? That seems kind of harsh.”

“No, because this area is restricted. Didn’t you see the signs?”

Dial turned and stared at the man who was trying to throw him out.

Andropoulos was young and lanky, dressed in a cheap suit that was two sizes too small. His hands and wrists hung three inches beyond his sleeves-as though he had recently grown and didn’t have enough money to get a new wardrobe. Or visit a tailor. Or get a haircut. Because his head was covered with dark curly hair that went over his ears and the back of his neck. Like a Greek Afro.

Dial said, “You seem to know a lot about this place. Are you a tour guide or something?”

Andropoulos reached into his pocket and pulled out his badge. “I am definitely something . I am the NCB agent assigned to this case. In fact, I am in charge of the investigation.”

Dial smirked, then refocused his attention on the monastery. In this light its beige walls appeared to be glowing. Almost like amber. It was truly a remarkable sight.

“Please, Nick. Don’t make me tell you again. It’s time to leave.”

But Dial wasn’t ready. He picked up a pebble and tossed it over the edge. It fell for several seconds yet never made a sound, swallowed by the chasm below. He whistled, impressed.

In all his years, he had never worked in such a difficult location.

Simply put, this crime scene was going to be a bitch.

Dial picked up a second pebble, slightly larger than the first, and leaned back to throw it. He hoped to test a theory about the valley. But before he could, the young officer grabbed his arm.

“I wouldn’t throw that if I were you.”

“Really? Why not?”

“Because I’m in charge and I said so.”

Dial grinned. This was going to be fun. “And if I were you, I’d let go of my arm.”

“Really? Why is that?”

He yanked his arm free and whipped out his identification. “Because I’m your boss.”

Nick Dial ran the Homicide Division at Interpol, the largest international crime-fighting organization in the world, which meant he dealt with death all over the globe. His job was to coordinate the flow of information between police departments anytime a murder investigation crossed national boundaries. All told, he was in charge of 186 member countries, filled with billions of people and hundreds of languages.

One of the biggest misconceptions about Interpol was their role in stopping crime. They seldom sent agents to investigate a case. Instead they used local offices called National Central Bureaus in the member countries. The NCBs monitored their territory and reported pertinent information to Interpol Headquarters in Lyon, France. From there, facts were entered into a central database that could be accessed via Interpol’s computer network.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t always enough. Sometimes the head of a division (Drugs, Counterfeiting, Terrorism, etc.) was forced to take control of a case. Possibly to cut through red tape. Or handle a border dispute. Or deal with international media. All the things that Nick Dial hated to do. In his line of work, the only thing that mattered to him was justice . Correcting a wrong in the fairest way possible. That was the creed he had lived by when he was an investigator.