C. Palov - Templar's Code

The information had been freely given. But of course. Beautiful people rarely came under suspicion. A defect in human nature that Saviour often exploited to his advantage.

Able to see two blurry shadows through the sheer fabric that hung at the window, Saviour aimed the parabolic dish in that direction.

“. . . he spent some time in Key West working with the Fisher team trying to locate shipwrecked Spanish galleys.”

Smiling, he turned on the recording device, his two lovebirds coming in loud and clear.

Able to finally relax after a hectic day, he retrieved a box of Dunhill cigarettes and a silver lighter from his jacket pocket. The lighter, engraved with the Creator’s star, had been a birthday gift from Mercurius. A man of deep religious convictions, Mercurius had an almost fanatical attachment to the eight-pointed star. It was much the same way that his mother, Iphigenia, had been slavishly devoted to the Virgin Mary, their squalid flat inundated with her unsmiling image. Personally, Saviour preferred the image of Jesus on the cross, a writhing half-naked man in his death throes.

As he flipped open the lighter, Saviour cursed under his breath, his right hand, now swollen, throbbing from the earlier run-in with the Brit. Somewhat clumsily he lit the cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth with his left hand. Inhaling deeply, his lungs filling with smoke, he savored the calming effects of the tobacco. A gift from the gods.

However, the gods had not always smiled so favorably upon him. There was a time when he could barely afford to buy one or two cigarettes, let alone an entire pack. That was when he knew what living on the knife’s edge meant. The hunger. The fear. The utter exhaustion. The simple desire for a soft bed and a full belly had become an obsession. But not for himself. He could do without. Instead, he coveted the small luxuries for his beloved Ari.

When Ari first took ill with a bad case of the chills, they naively assumed the hacking cough and elevated fever would soon dissipate. A few weeks later, he began to spit up blood, the respiratory ailment worsening, Ari so weak he could barely make the ten-block walk to the hospital. When the doctors diagnosed his friend with having a virulent strain of antibiotic-resistant pulmonary tuberculosis, Saviour had refused to believe it.

My God! It was a death sentence. He’d been sorely tempted to grab one of the shiny instruments off the bedside tray and jab it into the doctor’s soft underbelly. He was that enraged. And when the hospital staff quarantined Ari, refusing to release him until the danger of contagion had passed, Saviour had to be dragged from the hospital by two burly security guards.

Painfully aware that his friend needed more comfort than his meager income could provide—servicing dockworkers kept him fed and shod but paid for little else—Saviour quickly devised a plan to earn more money. Even a seventeen-year-old wharf rat knew that the male prostitutes who paraded along the Leoforos Nikis were in great demand; wealthy tourists and businessmen paid a hefty price for the pleasure of their company. Saviour also knew that those same tourists and businessmen had discriminating tastes. Meaning he had to somehow transform himself from a dirty wharf rat to a stylish escort.

Determined to provide for his ailing friend, he spent hours studying the haughty young men who strolled the Leoforos Nikis, the café-lined promenade that hugged the Thermaic Gulf. He spent even longer hours staring into a cracked mirror, affecting an aloof expression that conveyed a purposefully ambivalent message—that he might deign to spend some time with a client. Provided the price was right. Even then, it wasn’t absolutely assured. Because in those hours spent on Leoforos Nikis, he’d noticed a curious phenomenon: For the wealthy men with the well-padded wallets, it was all about the ritual of the hunt.

Needing to properly outfit himself for the ritual, he must have sucked a hundred cocks before he had enough money to buy a pair of white trousers, a striped boatneck jersey, and a small bottle of Paco Rabanne cologne. In a cost-saving measure, he’d stolen a pair of handmade leather loafers from a five-star hotel, sneaking in while the maid was changing the bedclothes.

His thick wavy hair professionally styled, his body bathed and scented, Saviour was now ready to join the other beautiful young men on the Leoforos Nikis.

His first night, a Saturday, a tall Dane with a memorable lack of body hair hired him for the entire evening. Saviour proceeded to spend what seemed like an eternity on his hands and knees. The next few nights passed in a blur. An entire group of Japanese businessmen. An American professor at Aristotle University. A French diplomat. At week’s end, he had enough money to rent a small one-bedroom flat just south of Egnatia Street. Close enough to smell the wafting incense at Agía Sophía. On Sunday, his well-deserved day of rest, he splurged on lamb and green beans. The next day, Monday, the doctors agreed to release Ari to his care. As he ushered his pale, pathetically thin friend into their new residence, he bit his lip, worried that Ari might not like the sparsely furnished flat. Side by side, they stepped across the threshold, the sun streaming through the newly washed windows. Ari reached for his hand. Too moved to speak.

In time, Ari’s illness forced him to reinvent himself yet again.

Saviour lit another cigarette. Suddenly hearing a static crackle in his headset, he readjusted the hearing device. Detecting a third voice, he turned up the volume.

“It’s been said that every great treasure hunt starts with a centuries-old rumor.”

At hearing the dead archaeologist’s voice eerily transmitted through his earpiece, Saviour nearly choked on a mouthful of smoke.

Skata!

It was like a ghost whispering into his ear.

CHAPTER 15

It’s been said that every great treasure hunt starts with a centuries-old rumor. My hunt is no different. Flashback five years ago to when I was a Ph.D. candidate at Brown University. That was the year I had an internship with the department chair, Dr. Cyrus Proctor, an expert on American Indian archaeology. A groundbreaking ceremony doesn’t take place in Rhode Island until Dr. Proctor has examined the site to determine if it has any cultural significance. God help the commercial developer if Dr. Proctor finds Native American artifacts buried in the soil. But I digress.

As fate would have it, I was sitting in Dr. Proctor’s office grading midterm exams the day that a middle-aged Indian dude walks in unannounced. The dude tells Dr. Proctor that his name is Tonto Sinclair—yeah, Tonto, I kid you not—and that he needs help tracking down Yawgoog’s treasure, Yawgoog being a mythic Narragansett folk hero. A scary-looking dude, Tonto had the word red-blooded tattooed across his knuckles. It didn’t take much to imagine him all done up in war paint with a tomahawk in one hand and a bloody scalp in the other. Anyway, Tonto produces a gold coin supposedly minted in the Middle Ages and a photograph of a large boulder carved with a medieval battle standard. He said the gold coin and the boulder were gifts from Yawgoog to the Narragansett tribe. Needless to say, Tonto had my undivided attention.

Not nearly as impressed, Dr. Proctor dismissed both items, claiming the gold ingot could be purchased on eBay, and the carved rock, which he’d seen before, was part of an eighteenth-century colonial hoax. Pronouncement made, Dr. Proctor sent Tonto packing.

For the next five years the incident haunted me. I kept thinking, What if there really was a treasure hidden in Rhode Island? Determined to answer that question, my first task was to research this Yawgoog character. To that end, I tracked down the Indian dude, Tonto Sinclair. Mistakenly thinking I was there to help the Narragansett find their lost treasure, Sinclair regaled me with the Yawgoog legends. While I’m no folklore expert, it was obvious the Narragansett Indians look upon Yawgoog as some sort of man-god. A couple of the tales in particular snared my attention. Like the one about Yawgoog, decked out in an apron, constructing a stone bridge across a river. Or Yawgoog hanging out in a cave large enough to house a small tribe. And last, but not least, Yawgoog liked to ride around on big whales.