The Devil Takes Half (8 page)

He slid a piece of paper over to the Englishman and asked him to write his name.

McLean quickly complied. His handwriting was spiky and narrow. It didn't match.

“
So if Eleni Argentis wasn't involved with you, who was she involved with?”

McLean wouldn't meet his eyes. “What difference does it make?”

“
It makes a great deal of difference,
Mr
. McLean. I'm sure a man of your erudition can understand why.”
Mister.
He would not refer to this womanish man as doctor or professor.

“
I did hear some things about her. Gossip mostly. Hearsay. Nothing that bears repeating ….”

“
I don't know if you are aware of the facts of the case, Mr. McLean, but someone slit the throat of her assistant, Petros Athanassiou, a sixteen-year-old boy. He was on a slab in what passes for a mortuary here until yesterday morning, when we buried him. As for her, we found her blood at the bottom of a trench, a couple of liters. The rest, the killer apparently dumped in the ocean. She's done. It's just a matter of time until what's left of her washes ashore.”

A tremor seemed to pass over Devon McLean. “They slit the boy's throat …?”

Patronas nodded. “From ear to ear.” He was enjoying this.

“
You mustn't let him know I was the one who told you.”

“
Mustn't let who know?”

“
Alcott. Eleni was involved with Jonathan Alcott.”

“
Are you sure?”

He nodded unhappily. “Everybody in the field knew about it. They tried to keep it quiet. It's not done, you know. One does not sleep with one's graduate students, even at Harvard. My understanding is, they were involved the whole time she was doing her thesis and she ended the affair the minute she completed it. Some in the archeological community say she used him. Others say he used her. Quite frankly, Alcott's been a bit of a bore since then, obsessing about their relationship at meetings and conferences, asking after her. When I heard he was on Chios, I was sure he'd come to try and reestablish the relationship. I told him to let it go. ‘Be done with her', I said.”

“
Do you think he was?”

“
I don't know. I don't keep up with the status of Alcott's romances.”

“
What do you mean ‘romances'? Was there someone else?”

“
That was my understanding. A lot of someone elses. A regular satyr, our Professor Alcott.”

“
Did you talk to Eleni's assistant when you were at the dig site?”

“
Petros, of course. He was a charming boy, witty and intelligent. Quite sophisticated in his understanding of the Minoans. We had a lovely conversation. He was well grounded in the fundamentals of archeology and well aware of what Eleni was seeking to accomplish.” He frowned. “It's hard to believe he's dead, that someone would kill a boy like that.”

Ah
, Patronas thought, hearing the rapture in his voice.
So that's the way it is.
He handed him the little bull. “I found this in his room.”

Devon McLean inspected it for a few moments. “A fairly good reproduction.”

“
Where do you think it came from?”

“
How should I know? Perhaps his mother purchased it for him in one of those tourist shops in Monasteraki.”

š›

Jonathan Alcott was standing outside, waiting to be interviewed, when McLean came out. Patronas could hear the two of them arguing.

“
The shards from the dig site are valuable relics that need to be catalogued before they are lost,” Alcott was saying, “catalogued by someone who understands and appreciates Minoan history.”

“
They are nothing, Alcott, and you know it. She found nothing.”

“
You can't be sure of that.”

“
Of course I'm sure. She didn't find it, did she? No Atlantis. No proof the Minoans were here. Nothing. Your theory is just that, a theory, at this point.” He stopped when he saw Patronas, standing in the doorway, listening to them.

“
Good day, Chief Inspector,” McLean said, turned on his heel and left.

Patronas escorted Jonathan Alcott into the refectory. The American seemed nervous. “You said you wanted me to look at some shards, but this isn't about that, is it?” he said. “It's about Eleni. The hand in the trench.”

“
That's right. We're treating it as a homicide.”

“
What do you want from me?”

“
Let's start at the beginning, Mr. Alcott.” He flipped open his notebook. “When did you arrive on Chios?”

“
July twenty-fourth. I flew here from Harvard.”

Interesting people, these academics. Not from countries, like the rest of us, but from universities.

He noted the American's expensive athletic shoes, the spandex shirt. Judging by the tourists on Chios, Alcott's countrymen were people who liked to be comfortable and to buy things. They didn't come to places like Profitis Ilias in July, outfitted like a bicyclist on the Tour de France.

Alcott, in turn, studied Patronas. The policeman reminded him of someone, but he couldn't place who it was.

“
Tell me, Mr. Alcott,” Patronas asked, “what brought you to Profitis Ilias on July twenty-sixth?”

“
Eleni Argentis invited me. She wanted me to help catalogue her findings.”

Alcott had it now. It was Charles de Gaulle. Patronas was a dead ringer, a sort of mini version of the famous French leader. He had the same physique, heavily weighted at the center, the same high-handed manner, and certainly the same pendulous nose. Even the same grubby little moustache. And the way he spoke, slowly and carefully, braying each word as if it was graduation day and he was the one calling out the names. At this rate, they'd be here all day.

“
I told you the day it happened,” Alcott said impatiently. “The trench was flooded, absolutely soaked like it had been raining. All that blood, drying in the sun. Blood everywhere. And the flies, buzzing in my ears, feeding on it. It was a horror show.”

Lighting a cigarette, Patronas inhaled deeply and blew smoke in the American's direction. Cigarettes were often useful in Patronas' opinion, especially with Americans. A socially acceptable form of brass knuckles.

“
What happened next?”

“
I ran,” Alcott responded.

“
You didn't hesitate? Look over the dig site? Go through her things?”

“
Are you kidding? All I wanted was to get out of there.”

“
What was she looking for? Mr. McLean said something about Atlantis.”

“
There's a theory that both Eleni and I subscribe to. We believe the myth of Atlantis is actually true, that it's the story of Minoan civilization, which was lost when the volcano on Santorini erupted.”

“
Thera,” Patronas said, correcting him. Santorini was the foreign name for the island, Thera the Greek one. They were in Greece. Hence, ‘Thera.'

Alcott rattled on, oblivious. “Some scholars even go so far as to claim that the famous passage about the Red Sea in
Exodus
was actually an eyewitness account of a tsunami. And the seven plagues, the rain, the stinking river, were descriptions of volcanic activity, the eruption on Santorini.”

“
Thera,” Patronas said, louder this time.

“
It was by far the most terrifying event witnessed by ancient man,” Alcott went on. “It produced huge earthquakes and tidal waves over one hundred fifty feet high. They estimate the one that hit Crete was traveling at five hundred miles per hour. Imagine the destruction. A wave of water like that, slamming into the lowlands around Knossos. It destroyed agriculture and the ash darkened sunlight all over the known world. The island itself sank beneath the sea in one cataclysmic spasm. You asked what Eleni was hoping to find. She was looking for a Minoan outpost here. To demonstrate the extent of their kingdom.”

“
Kingdom, huh?” Patronas motioned to the shards spread out on the stone table. “Is that what this is?” He was tired of this man telling him about Greek things.

Alcott picked up one of the shards and inspected it. He was much more thorough than the Englishman had been, comparing similar shards and trying to piece them together. “Definitely Minoan, some of them, mixed in with a great deal of later material.”

“
You're sure.”

“
Absolutely. No question.”

“
Devon McLean thinks they're worthless.”

“
I'm not surprised. He has that reputation. Unless he finds it himself, the discovery is always second-rate. He wanted to do his PhD with me, but I refused. I always thought there was something off-putting about the way he belittles the work of his colleagues, something unsavory.”

Patronas handed him the bull. “I found this in Petros' room.”

The American put his glasses on and studied it carefully. He turned it over and over again in his hand, running his thumb up and down its surface, caressing it.

“
Gold?” Patronas asked.

Alcott nodded.

“
What do you think it is worth?”

“
You can't place a value on it. It's priceless. Probably the only one in existence.”

“
How did Petros come by it?”

“
I have no idea. Eleni wouldn't have given it to him. It's too valuable.”

“
So where did he get it?”

The American shrugged. “Perhaps he took it from the dig site without telling her.”

“
How carefully would she have supervised him?”

“
If she liked him, not at all.”

“
You sound very sure of that. Had you ever been on a dig with her? How well did you know her?” Patronas was watching him carefully.

Alcott's voice was sad. “I'm sure McLean has already told you. Eleni and I were involved with each other when she was at Harvard. At one time, she wanted me to leave my wife and marry her, but then she seemed to lose interest. There are those who allege she wouldn't have passed her PhD qualifying exams without my support and that she was ‘playing me.' But I don't think so. I think she loved me in her own way. At least for a while.”

“
Did she threaten to tell your wife about your affair? The people at Harvard?”

“
Eleni? God, no. She had lots of theories about loving and being loved. The main one being that it had to be spontaneous and voluntary. No strings, no obligations, no middle-class expectations.”

“
No middle-class expectations?” Patronas was incredulous. In Greece if a woman slept with you, it was only because she
had
middle class expectations, not the other way around. A man was simply the means to an end, the end being a house, children. ‘The whole catastrophe,' Zorba had called it. Middle-class expectations, not hormones, were the sexual lubricant of choice in Greece.

Alcott seemed lost in his memories. “She didn't believe in free love exactly, something more poetic. The trading of souls. After we stopped seeing each other, she just took herself off to Greece. We corresponded for a couple of years, but then even that ended. I came here partly to see how she was. It's hard to explain the relationship of a professor and his PhD candidates to a layperson. When you have a student as gifted as Eleni, the relationship, the intellectual exchange, is intense; the hours are long; the commitment is all-consuming. You have a vested interest in their well being, their success. It's almost as if whoever they are, whatever they attain, is your creation. You can't let them go.”

Patronas stared at Alcott for a long time. “You can't let them go?”

“
No, never.” The American began to weep quietly. “You don't understand. I loved Eleni Argentis. I will never forget the sight of her, hunched over her books in my office, her joy when I hooded her at her graduation. It went beyond the sexual, our relationship. She was the best student I ever had. She had such promise, such amazing promise.” He began to cry in earnest now. “Forgive me, Chief Officer.”

Patronas let him cry for a few minutes. “Was she the only student you were involved with?”

Alcott shook his head.

Patronas raised his eyebrows
. The old cat wants tender mice.
“How many others were there?”

“
A few. Only a few.” The American kept his head down, his voice low.

“
Only a few.” Patronas let the words sit there.

“
Like I told you, the intellectual relationship between a graduate student and their adviser is intense and sometimes it spills over and, inadvertently, becomes a physical relationship as well.”

“
Did Eleni know about the others?”

“
She might have. Someone might have told her.”

Laboriously, the chief officer entered all this in his notebook. When he'd finished, he turned again to the American. “You said she was looking for the lost Atlantis.” He tried to keep what he thought of this idea out of his voice. “In your opinion, had she found what she was looking for?”