Payne nodded his approval. He considered it a minor miracle that they had been able to do all this work in a single night. It would have taken him a month, if he could have done it at all. “One question, though. Why didn’t Richard have
“You know,” Jones said, “that bothered us, too. He wrote the coat equals the key at the bottom of a page, but we couldn’t find those two words anywhere in his translations.”
“Any theories on why not?”
Jones nodded. “One. And you’re not going to like it.”
Payne leaned back in his chair. “Go on.”
“We think maybe, just maybe, that Richard used his legal pad as his scratch pad. You know, to work things out before he transferred them to a different page. Kind of like we did.”
“Sounds practical to me. So where’s his main page?”
“We think there’s a chance that he had it on him when he was killed.”
Payne groaned. “Why do you say that?”
Jones glanced at Allison. “Go on. Tell him.”
“Because Richard often carried a folded piece of paper in his shirt pocket. Depending on the color of his shirt, you could see it in there.”
“But you never read it?”
She shook her head. “Nope. I never read it, so it could have been anything.”
“Still,” Payne said, “we have to assume the worst.”
“Which is?”
Jones answered the question. “All the work we just did is currently in the hands of the Russian police, and they’re trying to figure out what it all means.”
“But that’s not all,” Payne stressed. “On the day that Richard was killed, he was scheduled to meet with Ivan Borodin. If Ivan’s phone number was on that paper, there’s a good chance the cops have called him and asked him about Richard’s death. And if that happened, there’s a damn good chance that Ivan called the cops and told them about us.”
57
Nick Dial’s eyes sprang open in the darkness. He blinked a few times, trying to regain his bearings, before he realized where he was and what was happening. His cell phone was ringing on the nearby nightstand. Outside his window, the sun had not made an appearance. The only light in the hotel room was coming from the phone’s tiny screen.
Dial tried to read the name on his caller ID, but drowsiness prevented it.
“Hello?” he answered groggily.
“Nick, it’s Henri.”
There was no teasing or joking. Toulon’s voice was solemn.
Dial sat up and rubbed his eyes. It was early in Greece but even earlier at Interpol Headquarters in France. “What’s wrong?”
“The Sparti police just called. George Pappas and two other officers never returned from their fact-finding trip in the Taygetos Mountains. No one’s heard from them since they left yesterday afternoon.”
A few seconds passed before the information sank in. “What do we know?”
“Pappas is well respected in Sparti. He’s not a drinker or a hothead. He has a wife and family. He’s not the type of guy who would go on a bender and disappear for a few days. Plus, there were two other officers with him. One’s a ten-year vet, the other a rookie. What are the odds that they all ran off together?”
Dial considered other variables, not ready to jump to any conclusions. “Any theories?”
“Car problems are a possibility. Many of the villages are remote, and cell phone coverage is shaky at best. There is always a chance that they are stranded.”
“But you don’t think so.”
“A few hours I could understand. Twelve hours seems unlikely. Three officers should have been able to flag someone down in that time.”
“What about a car wreck? Some of the roads near Meteora were pretty treacherous.”
“That’s another possibility. But not a pleasant one.”
Dial nodded as he pictured three cops bleeding at the bottom of a ravine. “Yet somehow I sense that’s better than foul play.”
“
“What do the cops in Sparti think?”
“They are hoping for stranded. They are preparing for something worse.”
“Meaning?”
Toulon explained. “The reason Pappas took two officers with him is because of the reputation of some of the local villagers. A few of them are known for their brutality, which is why Pappas suspected them in the first place.”
“What are the cops planning?”
“They are forming a search party, a mixture of police and soldiers from a nearby army base. At first light, they are going into the mountains. I am told they will be fully armed.”
“Are you serious?”
“They want to be prepared, just in case.”
Dial swung his feet off the bed and onto the stone floor. It was cold and unforgiving, like the regret surging through his head. He was the one who had ordered Pappas to investigate the Spartans. If something had happened to him, the feelings of guilt would stick with Dial for a very long time.
“Keep me posted, Henri. I want to know as soon as you know something.”
“Not a problem, Nick.”
“One more thing. Please stress to the cops that Pappas was looking for the men responsible for the Meteora massacre. If they locate any suspects, it would be helpful if they brought them in alive.”
Unfortunately, the police would not find anything of value in Little Sparta.
Shortly after the young Spartans had finished killing Pappas, Manos, and Constantinou, Apollo ordered them to dispose of all the bodies on the other side of the valley, far away from any roads or trails. He knew the wolves that roamed the hills at night would feast on the dead cops long before a search party was assembled in Sparti.
Meanwhile, Apollo and his men handled the evidence in the village. The blood puddles were covered with dirt and rocks. The murder weapons-more than fifteen in total-were cleaned and sharpened. And Pappas’s vehicle was used to transport several Spartans to Leonidi, a small town on the Aegean Sea, where they would launch the final phase of their mission.
If everything went as planned, the Spartans would return home in a few days and continue living the way they had lived for more than two millennia.
If not, they would die protecting their most treasured possession.
The legacy of their ancestors.
The Spartans’ mission had started several weeks earlier when a foreigner arrived at their village. Unlike the police, who only caused problems, this man wanted to solve one.
Apollo wasn’t the trusting type, especially when it came to outsiders. After all, it was a traitorous Greek who had helped Xerxes and the invading Persian army to defeat the Spartans at the Battle of Thermopylae. But this foreigner seemed different. Although he spoke with a funny accent, he knew more about the history of the Spartans than any of the village elders. Plus he had in his possession the type of historical evidence that was tough for Apollo to ignore-an ancient document that was written long before any of the villagers were born.
If his parchment was correct, a Greek holy man by the name of Cydonius had spent his life compiling the true
