The Devil Takes Half (2 page)

The man gave him a sharp look. “How do you know my name?”

“
Eleni Argentis has talked of nothing but your visit for weeks.” He unhooked his ring of keys and gave them to Vassilis. “You will take him down to the site. She and Petros are usually there at this time of day. Go the back way.”

Vassilis nodded. He opened the door and stepped back out into the sunlight. “Come,” he told the American.

“
Kyria Papoulis is here and she will prepare dinner for us,” the priest called after them. “Take as long as you need. You can eat whenever you like.”

Vassilis led the American across the courtyard and down a set of stairs near the back wall of the monastery. He unlocked an iron gate and pushed it open. The door groaned eerily in the silence
.
“Shorter this way,” he said.

The American followed him through a short tunnel cut in the rock. “When was this built?” he asked.

“
Eighteen twenty-two,” the Greek replied and drew a line across his throat.

The American swore under his breath. Was there no place on this island the Turks hadn't bloodied? In every church he'd visited, some old crone had paused in her sweeping to point out the scarred patches on the floor, claiming they were bloodstains, talking about the massacre as if it had happened yesterday. He'd heard the story on four separate occasions so far and he'd only been on the island two days. Thousands slaughtered or sold into slavery by marauding Turks in the spring of 1822. Stirred by the tragedy, Delacroix had even painted it. There was a reproduction at his hotel. It was a gruesome work. Genocide clothed in nineteenth-century dress, the Turks prancing around in velvet slippers and fezzes, the dead Chiots piled up at their feet. In spite of the stories, the American remained skeptical. Still, the evidence of the skulls stacked up in the corners of the churches was hard to deny, especially the small ones, the children's, as were the ruined villages, abandoned on the hillsides.

He touched the wall of the tunnel. The workmanship was impeccable. The square stones fit together seamlessly. Narrow openings at the top let in light, and the air was surprisingly fresh. Alcott doubted it had been built in the nineteenth century. More likely by the Romans, who'd used it as an aqueduct. Eleni had been right to look here. He hurried after Vassilis. They walked for a few minutes in silence. There was no door at the end of the tunnel, only a rough opening in the rock. The American looked back. The tunnel was well hidden, the entrance just a shadowy cleft in the lava.

“
Over there, they are digging.” The Greek pointed to a small plateau in the distance. The American could see the plastic tenting strung up over a grid of trenches dug in the earth. The Greek stood and watched from above as Alcott made his way down to the dig site. It was a treacherous climb. The loose gravel and debris made the ground slippery, and by the time he'd reached the clearing, a red powdery dust caked his shoes and hands. Cicadas buzzed in a forgotten olive tree and the air was hot and still.

The view was astounding. From where he stood he could see deep into the interior of Turkey. Far below, boats crisscrossed the channel that divided the two countries, their wakes white in the dark water. Whoever had selected the site in ancient times had feared their neighbors and wanted to keep an eye on them. Bordered on all sides by a series of skeletal peaks, it was as well-hidden as Machu Picchu.

He walked toward the plastic tenting, moving carefully between the trenches dug in the ground. He paused, fingering one or two of the shards left out in an open box. “Old, old,” he muttered. “Damn her.”

“
Eleni,” he called.

There seemed to be a surprising number of flies everywhere, whining in the heat. “Eleni,” he called again.

Where was her assistant, the village boy who was helping with the excavation? He jumped down and inspected the dirt on either side of one of the trenches. Layers of white material were interspersed throughout the clay. He pried out a piece. It appeared to be part of an amphora, the handle still in place. He ran his fingers over it tenderly before placing it back where he'd found it and climbing out of the trench. He looked around him again, disturbed now. About ten feet off, he could see the beginnings of a third trench and walked toward it. There were more flies there, and tubes of polymer filler and archeological equipment were scattered everywhere. “Eleni?”

As he peered into the trench, he dropped to his knees. “Oh, God.”

Choking, the American tried to rise and stumbled backward. “Vassilis,” he screamed. “Oh, God. Vassilis.”

What man went to the Land of the Dead with more than one coin obolos?

—
Greek Drinking Song

N
ight was falling as Yiannis Patronas, the chief officer of the Police, climbed into his old Citroen and set off for Profitis Ilias, the distant hills purple in the fading light. He cursed as he drove, honking and beating the steering wheel with his hand when the car in front of him stalled. He dreaded the trip up the mountain to that wasteland of a monastery, especially at this hour. The path would be treacherous in the dark, the wind threatening to pull him off the peak. Normally he would have ignored the call, but there had been something in the old man's voice. The priest had sounded badly frightened.

He could smell smoke billowing from the exhaust pipe of the Citroen, the engine burning oil by the bucketful. He desperately needed a new car and had repeatedly petitioned the authorities in Athens for one, but his supervisor had denied his request. “Don't you read the papers? The Germans have bled us dry.” Two weeks later he'd received notice that his salary had been cut in half because of the crisis. Now, in addition to having no car, he was going to starve to death.

He parked at the bottom of the hill and started up the path. Ahead the monastery was a menacing presence on the hill. The huge eucalyptus trees that surrounded it were bending in the wind, the leaves roaring like the sea. He kept one hand on the wall as he made his way to the summit. The path was built along the edge of a sharp precipice. Horses overburdened with supplies had plunged to their deaths on the rocks below, and he had no wish to join them.

A cable strung with naked electric bulbs crisscrossed the courtyard of the monastery. Providing scant light, it made the space appear even more desolate, like a deserted carnival. The priest was standing in front of an open door. He had summoned Patronas by phone after the American had come stumbling back from the trench.

“
Thank God you're here,” he said.

The American had vomited outside on the steps, he told him, and twice inside the room. Two other people were with him now, Marina Papoulis and Vassilis Korres. Patronas knew them both. He and Marina had gone to school together and Korres was the son of local farmer. The woman was clearing away the remnants of lunch, spread out on the table. The smell of the heavy food, the stewed lamb in
avgolemono
sauce, was overwhelming in the heat. The American was sitting on a chair. His face was ashen, his shirt flecked with vomit and blood. The others avoided looking at him.

“
After he showed up,” Papa Michalis said in a low voice, “I went down to see for myself.” He stopped for a moment, unable to continue. “Chief Officer, there was a great deal of blood, a pool of it at the bottom of one of the trenches. I thought perhaps an animal … but there was too much blood for a sheep or a goat.” He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Also, I saw part of hand, nearly whole it was, mixed up in it.”

“
Are you sure?”

The old man nodded. “I'm afraid for her. I called and called, but she didn't answer.”

He fetched a propane lantern and handed it to him, then led him out through the tunnel in the back. He pointed to the plastic sheeting, glimmering in the deepening twilight. “Go, see for yourself,” he said. The trenches were darker than the land around them. They looked like wounds in the earth.

Patronas made his way down to the dig site. Bats were flitting across the sky, and he could see the moon rising out over the sea. A large tarp covered most of the area, a pair of folding tables pushed together beneath it. On top of the tables were three or four wooden boxes. The priest had said the trench farthest away from the monastery was where he'd seen the blood.

The trench was about as wide as a coffin and nearly three meters long. A breeze had come up and the air was surprisingly cool. Aside from the blood, there were no other signs of violence, only scattered pieces of whitened material that crunched underfoot like shells on a beach. Crouching down, Patronas moved the lantern back and forth over the trench, studying the ground below. The pool of blood was there, just as the priest had described it. Congealed now, it looked to be about three centimeters deep. The palm of a hand was evident, too, mixed in with the blood.

“
She had an assistant, you know.”

Startled, Patronas spun around. He relaxed when he saw the cloaked form of the priest. The old man must have crept down here after him.

“
He's a local boy, her assistant,” the priest continued. “Petros Athanassiou. He's been working here since school got out.” The priest looked out over the dusky hills. “He's only sixteen years old.”

“
Was he up here this afternoon?”

“
I didn't see him today. But he usually is.”

“
Perhaps he left before this happened. Perhaps he's back in Chora.”

“
Perhaps,” the priest said without conviction. He waved feebly at the blood in the trench. “I didn't believe the American at first. Such things don't happen here. In Rwanda maybe, but not here, not on Chios. In New York, too, they happen.” Papa Michalis nodded to himself. He knew about the mayhem in America from the police shows he watched, rebroadcast from the states on Greek TV.

Grunting, the chief officer stood up. He wanted to get on with the job and be rid of this garrulous old fool. “Could we talk about this another day, Father?”

But the priest was not to be put off. “Do you think it's hers? The hand, I mean?”

Patronas looked down. The ground was sodden with blood. He doubted that either Eleni Argentis or the boy had ever been fingerprinted, and DNA analysis was not available on Chios. “I don't know whose it is,” he said gruffly.

He climbed into the trench. Reluctant to go farther, he stopped near to where the pool of blood lapped at the dirt walls. Watching him, the priest was surprised by this. He himself was not squeamish, having served in the army during World War II more than sixty years before. He had been forced to bury more dead than he cared to remember, German and Greek alike.
In the army of the dead, there are no nations, no flags.

After a long moment, Patronas knelt down and carefully gathered up the hand and dropped it in a plastic bag; then he swabbed the blood and put it in a second bag, thinking that he'd send both pieces of evidence on to the crime laboratory in Athens. He raised the lantern and took a final look around. Aside from the blood, there was little else, no discernible trace elements. “Eleni Argentis is in charge here, isn't she?”

The priest nodded.

“
What's she like?” He took care to use the present tense. No need to start rumors in town before he knew what had transpired here, whose blood this was.

“
Generous. Hard-working.”

“
Rich, too?”

“
Exceedingly so. She bought everything you see, all the equipment, even a laptop computer for Petros, a Toshiba, to use for his schoolwork and to track their findings.”

Patronas began to bag the dirt and shards next to the bloody pool. “So she's not like the rest of them, her stepmother and that son of hers?”

“
Oh, no. Eleni's simple in her pleasures. Archeology is all she cares about. She sleeps here sometimes in a little pup tent she brought from the United States. Camps out to save time. A young woman like that. She bought a generator to light the site so she could work at night.”

“
Where's the generator now?” Patronas asked, thinking the light might help him now.

“
It quit about a month after she got it. We could never figure out why. Vandalism would have been my guess. It's in the monastery if you want to take a look at it.”

“
What did she tell you about the American? The one who found the blood?” He passed him the lantern and climbed out of the trench. It was too dark now. He'd have to do the rest tomorrow.

“
Alcott? She knew him from Harvard. Jonathan Alcott. Supposedly he's a great scholar, an authority on Bronze Age Greece. She was thrilled when he agreed to come to Chios. She said he'd validate her findings.”

“
Father, what exactly did she think she'd found here?”

He hesitated. “A Minoan site or perhaps the remnants of some more ancient, unknown race.”

Together they walked up the hill, the lantern making a circle of light at their feet.

“
She was sure she'd found it?”

“
Yes,” the priest said. “And for that they killed her.”

Where many roosters crow, dawn is slow in coming.

—
Greek proverb

“
I
t's late,” the priest told Patronas. “Why don't you sleep in one of the rooms here? You can stow the evidence in the refectory, use it as your murder room.”