“Wonderful,” Dial said sarcastically. “Thanks for the update. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
“Wait! Don’t hang up. I’m not finished.”
“Go on, I’m listening.”
“Next, I pondered what you said to me. You asked if these killers could be Spartans. I laughed at you and told you no because Sparta is no more. But the more you argued, the less sure I became. They sounded like real Spartans to me. So I called Spárti-”
“Spárti? What’s Spárti?”
“It is city built on top of ancient Sparta. It is in the Peloponnese of southern Greece.”
“Never heard of it.”
“It is small, maybe twenty thousand people. It is located near the Eurotas River in Laconia.”
“If you say so. Currently I’m in a parking lot, nowhere near a map.”
“Well, trust me, Spárti is real. And the man I spoke with was quite helpful.”
“What man?”
“An NCB agent by the name of George Pappas. He has lived there for many years.”
“And?”
“You will not believe me, but he swore to me that Spartan soldiers still exist.”
“What are you talking about?”
Toulon laughed. “See, I knew you wouldn’t believe me. You never believe me.”
Dial ignored him. “Give me details.”
“First, you must understand the geography. The Peloponnese is a large peninsula separated from the rest of Greece by the Gulf of Corinth. If not for a narrow land bridge in the northeast corner, it would actually be an island, not a peninsula. Spárti sits at the bottom on the southern end of the Laconian plain. It is guarded by mountains on three sides, isolated from the rest of Greece by distance and geology. Ancient Sparta was settled there for that very reason. These were men of war. They built their city in a location that would be difficult to attack.”
“Got it,” Dial said. “I can picture it in my head. It’s south of the city of Olympia, about halfway to the island of Crete.”
“Good job, Nick! Someone did his homework on his flight to Athens.”
“They didn’t make me chief for nothing.”
“Well, we can talk about that some other time. For now, let’s stick to my point: Spárti is very isolated. And since it is, it is very different from mainland Greece.”
“In what way?”
“For one, some of the people-particularly those who live in the mountain villages-don’t speak Greek. They speak Tsakonian.”
“Tsakonian? I’ve never heard of it.”
“Let me make it simpler. They speak the language of Sparta.”
“Hold up! People still speak Spartan?”
“More or less. It comes from the language of Ancient Sparta, though it’s been updated through the years. Some experts classify Tsakonian as a dialect, but that’s incorrect. It is a separate Hellenic language, different from the branch of Ancient Athens, which eventually became Modern Greek. Tsakonian is Doric Greek, not Attic Greek. So it is different.”
Dial grimaced at the information. “Speaking of foreign languages, I didn’t understand half the shit you just said. But that’s okay. I’m kind of used to it. You speak English like a tourist.”
“That was funny, Nick. Perhaps I will tell you the rest of this en français.”
“Sorry. I didn’t understand that, either. We must have a bad connection.”
“Oui. Let us blame your ignorance on your cell phone.”
“And we’ll blame your English on your drinking.”
Toulon smiled. “Touché.”
“Anyway,” Dial said, trying to get the conversation back on track, “didn’t you say something about Spartan soldiers?”
“Oui. I was just getting there.” Toulon opened his desk drawer and grabbed his pack of cigarettes. “Some of these mountain towns, they are filled with people from a different era. They have no television. They have no electricity. They don’t even speak Greek. All they have is one another and the culture they have always known. The culture of Sparta.”
“Continue.”
“This morning, I told you about their ancestors. Spartan boys were bred for war. They lived for it. They died for it. It’s all they cared about. It was passed from fathers to sons for generations until it was so much a part of them that they could do nothing else. Some men are born farmers. Some men are born poets. And some men are born warriors. These are those men.”
Toulon pulled out a cigarette and held it under his nose like a glass of fine wine. “You have these men in America, no? They live in Montana with their kids and their dogs and they follow their own rules. What is it you call them?”
“Militia.”
“Oui! Like the Unabomber, Ted Kuzneski.”
“Kaczynski.”
“Whatever! You know the men I mean. Every country has them. Some are called rebels. Some are called guerrillas. Some are freedom fighters. But they are one and the same. They choose a cause and fight for it because that is who they are.”
Dial was quite familiar with militant types and the damage they could do. He had been assigned to the southwestern U.S. in 1993 when a religious sect called the Branch Davidians, led by David Koresh, had faced off against the ATF and the FBI, 9 miles outside of Waco, Texas. The resulting fifty-one-day siege ended with the death of eighty-two church members, including twenty-one children.
Exactly two years later, to the day, Timothy McVeigh parked a Ryder truck, filled with 5,000 pounds of explosives, outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City and lit the fuse. The resulting blast killed 168 people and injured over 800 more. At the time, it was the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil-since surpassed by 9/11.
And in all these cases, Dial had been called in to help with the official investigation.
“So,” Dial asked, “the hills around Spárti are filled with these men?”
“Oui, but they are different from militia.”
“In what way?”
“They use no guns. They use no bombs. They fight with their hands and their blades.”
“Just like their ancestors.”
“Just like the Spartans.”
Dial considered this while staring at the natural rock pillars that loomed behind the hotel. They stood at attention like ancient soldiers whose sole job was to guard the monasteries from any force that meant them harm. Over the centuries, they had performed their duty admirably during times that were far more turbulent than these: times of war and revolution in Greece.
That’s why none of this made any sense.
What had brought on the sudden violence? And what did it have to do with Spartans? If, in fact, that’s who the killers were. What connection could they possibly have with a bunch of monks who lived several hundred miles away from Spárti?
“Let me ask you a question,” Dial said, racking his brain for potential links between the two groups. “Were the Spartans religious people?”
Toulon shrugged. “That is a tough question. I do not know.”
“Really?” Dial teased. “I thought you were an expert on Ancient Greece.”
“I am. But no one knows the answer to your question. As I’ve mentioned, the Spartans did not support the arts. This included the art of writing. According to Spartan law, historical records were not kept. Literature was not created. And laws were memorized, not recorded. That means everything we know about the Spartans comes from outside sources, written by men who never fully grasped the culture that they described.”
“Then how do we know they were great warriors?”
“Because everyone, even their most hated rivals, praised their skill as soldiers. That is the one thing that all of Greece agreed upon. Do not mess with the Spartans.”