buying more.”
“What a pity.”
“He spends all his time in retreat. Of course, because he’s a bit of a megalomaniac he has his own monastery, and a cell for meditation which is equipped with a satellite link and fax machine, but his heart is in the right place, as much as he has one.”
“Where is this?”’
“Near Mount Athos. He spends more and more of his time there. Even dresses like something out of the Middle Ages. Rumour has it that he is repenting for his sins. He’s got a big job on his hands.”
“So we can forget him? Is that what you’re telling me? Same as this morning? So why this meeting?”’
“For the selfish delight of your beautiful company, dear signorina. And to point out that you might, as computers tell us to do these days, refine your search a little.”
“I know I’m being obtuse …”
“Not at all. Not at all. You have been looking for someone called Charanis.”
“Oh, I see. Brother, son, daughter, cousin?”’
“He has difficulties with his children, poor man, although I can’t imagine he was much fun to have as a father. Smothered them with material goods but, unfortunately, expected them to deserve it. He is absurdly competitive himself and, so it is said, took particular delight in winning, even when playing a little kid. When the poor boy was four, he used to try hard to beat him at table tennis. Of course, popular gossip says there are good —or at least understandable—reasons for this.”
“And? What does popular gossip say?”’
“It says that nine months before Mikis was born his wife was more than a little indiscreet. Charanis at the time was having a passionate affair with some woman, and his wife did the same. Now, this is a great dilemma. To admit your wife is unfaithful is a shaming thing. To preserve your pride and bring up a cuckoo in your nest is as bad.”
“He did the latter and made the son pay for it?”’
“Correct. Even after he divorced he kept the boy, largely, I suspect, to teach her a lesson. And Mikis has grown up with a very unfortunate personality and an unpleasant attitude towards authority. Of late, this has found its expression in politics.”
“Public service,” Flavia said. “Could be worse.”
Gyorgos grimaced. “I doubt it, unfortunately. He took up with the most venomous bunch of right-wing nationalists there are. The sort of people who make our old military junta seem like milksop liberals. Common pattern, I believe. A desire to impose order and discipline on the entire country and beat up foreigners to show you’re tougher than your father.”
“Lot of them about, these days. What does it mean in Greek terms?”’
“As you’d expect. Don’t like Slavs, don’t like Arabs, don’t like immigrants of any form. A fervent desire to discipline the country and bring it back to true patriotism and order. The usual brew, but in his case, of course, it’s allied to our glorious historical past.”
“Athens?”’
“Fraid not,” he said as he swept a bowl of nuts into his huge hand and thrust them into his mouth.
“Don’t tell me. Alexander the Great. He wants to conquer Persia.”
“A bit ambitious, even for someone as extreme as young Charanis,” Gyorgos continued after he had washed the remnants away with a large swallow of champagne and refilled his glass. “No; his past is the Christian empire. Byzantium, in other words. He and the motley collection of lunatics he associates with want to take back Istanbul. If Leningrad can become St Petersburg, why should Istanbul not become Constantinople again?”’
Fostiropoulos picked up another fistful of nuts, then changed his mind and poured the entire bowlful into his palm and swept them all into his mouth and sat there chewing noisily and smiling at Flavia to reassure himself that she had got the point.
“He’s got a big project, then.”
“As I say, you go back to the old certainties. Don’t underestimate them. Religion, history and dreams of glory make a heady brew for some people.”
“You’re not concerned about this, are you?”’
“Officially, no. Not least because he is still protected by his father, and he is not a man to annoy. Unofficially, five Muslims were burned to death in Thessaloniki a few months back, and we’re sure these people had something to do with it. There’s not many of them, they’re not powerful, but they are getting stronger. And yes, we are concerned.”
“Do you know where he is?”’
He shook his head. “Not in Greece, that’s for sure. We know he was, that he made a three-day trip to London three weeks ago, came back to Athens and then vanished. No one’s seen him for over a week.”
“Went to London, did he?”’
He nodded. “Does that concern you? Why?”’
“Just an idea. Could you do me a favour?”’
“Of course.”
“These pictures that alarmed the director of your museum. In Charanis’s collection. Could you find out what they are?”’
“A pleasure,” he said, looking at his watch. “Anything else?”’
“I wouldn’t mind a decent photograph of this man as well. One which isn’t so hazy.”
Gyorgos smiled, and reached into his pocket. “Nothing easier,” he said handing over an envelope. Flavia opened it up. “If you meet him again, do let me know. We are very interested in him, you know.”
“I will.”
“Now I must go. It has been a delight meeting you, signorina.”
And then he left, leaving Flavia with the remains of the nuts and just enough champagne in the bottle for another glass. What the hell, she thought, and poured it out.
Buoyed up by a pep talk of thanks and encouragement over breakfast from Flavia—who thought she might start learning the business of man-management with an easy target—Argyll returned to do battle with the intricacies of medieval handwriting and the complexities of dog Latin in a more determined frame of mind than he had managed the previous day.
He had, after all, something to work on. Previously, all he had known about the icon was that it was old and eastern. Now, from Fostiropoulos via Flavia, he had a bit more focus. Byzantine icons. Those travelling scholars and exiles the records had referred to so elliptically; they were the place to start, he felt sure, especially as the reference to the plague the painting fended off placed its arrival in the middle fifteenth century.
Constantinople falls to the Ottoman empire, and those who get away on western ships do so at the last moment. They bring what they can with them. Many are given pensions by the pope, or sympathetic monarchs in the west, guilty at not having gone to the aid of the Byzantines before it was too late. Some plan to launch a counteroffensive against the infidel, and travel the world, begging for help. others realize it is all over, that all hope died when wave after wave of Turks swept through breaches and brought two thousand years of Roman history to a violent end. These souls live out their lives as best they can, teaching if they cannot abandon the Orthodox faith, or entering monasteries if they can. They could at least console themselves in their exile that it all ended courageously, and that the last emperor, Constantine, had lived and died in the finest traditions of Rome, leading his dwindling band of troops until he was cut down by the enemy, and his body so dismembered it was never identified.
It was a gripping and poignant story, and Argyll felt a faint ripple of pleasure at the prospect of getting to grips with even the smallest fragment of it. Some of these lost and shocked exiles came to the monastery of San Giovanni. He was prepared to bet that one of them brought the icon as well. But so what? Many of these people brought lots of booty with them; some of them almost shameful amounts, the boats stuffed with valuables when they could have brought out citizens who were left behind. What was one picture amongst hundreds? How did it connect the end of the second Rome, and those who wanted to raise the third back to its traditional place?
The vigil had grown greater overnight. The number of flowers and prayers tagged to the door had grown, so that scarcely any of the old wood could be seen for as high as an arm could reach. Instead of a small handful of people encamped outside the door of the church, there was now a couple of dozen, and the sleeping bags
