The Lost Throne

But Byrd had been followed. For several hours on Sunday, he ducked in and out of buildings, trying to lose Kozlov in the tourist-filled crowds. On more than one occasion, Byrd thought he had slipped away, only to spot the cagey Russian in the distance.

This forced Byrd into a direction he didn’t want to go.

He needed to leave Saint Petersburg at once.

While riding in a taxi, Byrd called Allison and told her to get to the Peterhof as quickly as possible. He said something was wrong and they needed to leave the country. Don’t pack. Don’t check out. Just run. The fastest way to get there was on a boat called the Meteor. It was docked on the Neva River behind the Winter Palace. In the meantime, he would figure out how to cross the border. Just look for him on the rear patio of the Peterhof, and they would escape together.

Unfortunately, it was the last time they spoke to each other.

Kozlov didn’t want to kill Byrd at the Peterhof. But he didn’t have much choice.

There was no doubt in his mind that Byrd was fleeing the country. The Summer Palace was on the Gulf of Finland, an extension of the Baltic Sea. If Byrd had a boat, there was no way that Kozlov could follow him. The bastard would get away and wouldn’t come back.

That wasn’t the sort of thing Kozlov wanted on his resume.

So he made a gutsy choice. Instead of doing things as ordered, he decided to shoot Byrd before he had a chance to get away. That meant, no matter what, Kozlov had fulfilled two requirements of his contract: he had found Byrd and killed him before he left Russia.

The last step, figuring out why Byrd was there, would have to be postmortem.

Jones gathered the documents from Byrd’s safe and put them in a bag by the door. Then he returned to the bedroom to make sure he wasn’t missing anything important.

He searched under the bed, in the nightstand, in the dresser, even in the air-conditioning vents. Then he continued with Byrd’s belongings. He checked clothes and shoes, suitcases and toiletries, and a stack of books that sat in the corner of the room. From there, he moved his search to the other parts of the suite. There weren’t a lot of hiding places, and considering Byrd’s paranoia, Jones figured he wouldn’t find anything of value sitting out in the open.

And he was right. After several minutes of searching, Jones was ready to pack up.

It took two days for Kozlov to pick up Byrd’s scent. Two days of sitting on his ass in his hotel room, sifting through mountains of information in the FSB’s database. Two days of crunching numbers and making educated guesses before he noticed a pattern.

Of course, there is always a pattern. People are creatures of habit.

By studying old credit card statements, Kozlov determined that Byrd, a man of great wealth, always went first-class when he ventured around the globe. At least he did when he traveled as Richard Byrd. And since old habits were difficult to break, Kozlov predicted that Byrd would follow the same pattern when he was traveling under an alias.

The best hotels, the best restaurants, the best of everything.

In a city as large as Saint Petersburg, Kozlov knew he had to limit the scope of his search, so he decided to concentrate on one thing: luxury hotels. Particularly those close to Nevsky Prospekt. Not only was it the ritziest part of the city, but the avenue ran past several museums, including the Hermitage, which was where he had bumped into his target to begin with.

So that’s where Kozlov started-back at the Hermitage.

Armed with a gun, an old NCB badge, and a photograph of Byrd, Kozlov planned to visit every hotel on Nevsky Prospekt. He was going to flash his badge at every front desk and ask about the man in the picture. Now that Byrd was dead, he wasn’t nearly as worried about keeping things quiet. He was more concerned about finding information as quickly as possible.

And he would start at the hotel that was next to the museum.

The same hotel that David Jones was leaving.

41

Sparti, Greece (location of Ancient Sparta)

George Pappas was looking forward to this day. Even though he had been an NCB agent for twenty-one years, this was the first time he had ever been given an assignment from Interpol Headquarters. Not only that, but his orders came straight from the top. Nick Dial, the head of the Homicide Division, needed help with a multiple homicide at Meteora. He believed the killers might be from the mountain towns near Sparti, because of video evidence at the scene.

Normally, Pappas, a small-town cop, spent most of his time dealing with the tourists who flooded Greece during the summer months. He worked full-time for the local municipality, which was the administrative capital of Laconia, but also received a stipend for his NCB duties, which were usually limited to entering crime statistics into Interpol’s criminal database.

But today was a different story. After all this time, he was being asked to do real police work for Interpol as opposed to really boring police work.

And he couldn’t wait to get started.

Accompanying Pappas on the drive into the mountains were two younger officers, Stefan Manos and Thomas Constantinou. Manos was a ten-year veteran of the Sparti police force and was quite familiar with the people of the region. Meanwhile, Constantinou was the exact opposite. He had finished his police training in Athens less than a month ago and had never visited Laconia before being hired by Sparti. This was Constantinou’s first trip into the Taygetos Mountains, which made him an easy target for some teasing.

“Thomas,” Pappas said as he drove the four-wheel-drive truck up the winding road. “Make sure you stay close to us once we get into the village.”

“Why is that?” Constantinou asked from the cramped backseat.

Pappas looked at Manos in the passenger seat. “You didn’t tell him?”

Manos shook his head. “You invited the kid. I figured you would tell him.”

“Tell me what?”

Pappas glanced at him in his rearview mirror. “About your haircut.”

Constantinou rubbed his scalp, which he kept closely shaved. “What about it?”

“Everyone in the village has hair like yours. Men, women, kids. Even their goats.”

Manos laughed at the comment. He knew all about the Spartans and their haircuts.

“I don’t get it,” Constantinou said. “What’s so funny?”

“You mean you really don’t know?” Pappas asked. “I can’t believe no one told you. How are you going to succeed in Sparti if you don’t know anything about the locals and their customs? They should have told you this for your personal safety before they shipped you here.”

“Told me what?” he demanded.

Pappas tried not to smile, milking this for all it was worth. “Back in ancient times, Spartan men were required to get married at the age of twenty. This was after living with nothing but boys and the older men who mentored them for thirteen lonely years. The boys spent their days wrestling and training and bathing until they knew one another’s bodies like their own. In fact, they knew one another so well that the only people they were truly comfortable with were the other men in their squad. If you get what I’m saying.”

Constantinou nodded. “What does that have to do with my hair?”

“Relax. I’m getting to that.”

Manos clenched his tongue between his teeth, trying to keep from laughing.

“Spartans were never into fancy ceremonies, so their weddings consisted of a man choosing his wife and abducting her, sometimes quite violently. Now, don’t get me wrong. This wasn’t rape. This was just the way it was done in their culture. Spartans were bred to be aggressive, and that trait revealed itself on the battlefield and in the bedroom.”

Constantinou shifted uncomfortably in his seat, not sure where this story was going.