None of them could be read until they were translated by scholars, but the fountain of knowledge that they might contain was staggering.
“Hey, Allison,” Jones said as they continued to explore, “I just realized something.”
“What’s that?”
“Your thesis is going to have one hell of an ending.”
She laughed with childlike delight. “I was thinking the same thing.”
“Not only that,” he added. “You teamed up with Heinrich Schliemann to find this place.”
“I know! How wild is that?”
“Pretty damn wild.”
“Actually,” she admitted, “only one thing would make this better.”
Jones smiled. “Figuring out how to keep everything for ourselves?”
“No,” she said. “It would have been nice if we had found the Statue of Zeus. I mean, to discover one of the Seven Ancient Wonders of the World. That would have been, well, wonderful.”
While Jones and Allison continued to talk, Payne roamed to the far side of the cavern. In situations like this, the soldier in him always seemed to surface. Before he could enjoy the treasure, he needed to check the perimeter to make sure there were no possible threats. And if there were, he would eliminate them as quickly as possible.
Only in this case, he found no threats.
But he did find something that he couldn’t believe.
“Guys,” Payne called from his position near the back of the cave. “You have to see this.”
“See what?” Jones yelled back. “We’re busy playing with our gold.”
“Trust me, you need to see this. I can’t do it justice.”
Jones and Allison walked to the back of the cavern, where Payne was waiting for them to arrive. He was shining his light into an antechamber that hadn’t been visible from the entrance. Though not nearly as large as the main cavern, the space was big enough to store the most important treasure that the Ancient Greeks had recovered from Constantinople.
The object that Heinrich Schliemann had been looking for at the time of his death.
The one thing that all of them had hoped to find.
The disassembled pieces of the lost throne.
EPILOGUE
FRIDAY, JUNE 6
Limnos, Greece
Sixteen days had passed since the treasure had been discovered inside the Holy Mountain. During that time, Nick Dial had uncovered the answers to several questions.
As soon as he learned that the Spartans had used Richard Byrd’s yacht for their trip to Mount Athos, Dial contacted law enforcement officials in California, who acquired search warrants for Byrd’s home, office, and safe-deposit box. It didn’t take them long to find a direct link between Byrd and Apollo, the leader of the Spartans.
Several weeks earlier, Byrd had flown to Athens, rented a car, and driven to Spárti. A hotel reservation he had made with one of his fake identities confirmed his presence in the small town. While there, he purchased a disposable cell phone that was found at Apollo’s house, along with a map to the harbor in Leonidi, where Byrd’s yacht would be waiting for the Spartans, in case they required transportation. Phone records proved that several calls were made between Byrd’s and Apollo’s cell phones, apparently to coordinate the search for the treasure. This included the attack at Metéora. Since the Spartan village had no regular phone lines, this was the only way for Byrd to stay in touch with the men he had convinced to do his dirty work.
With this information, the Greek police were able to question the rest of the villagers, who were eventually found in the Taygetos Mountains, a few miles from their village. Most of them were uncooperative and unwilling to talk, but a few of them eventually broke down and revealed the Spartans’ motivation to go to Mount Athos.
Byrd had told Apollo that the Brotherhood possessed several documents that cast the Spartans in an unfavorable light. This included a document they referred to as “the book,” a comprehensive examination of Ancient Greece and all the city-states. One section supposedly contained inside information that had been written by a disillusioned Spartan. He hated the brutal culture he had been forced to endure from birth until he was in his mid-twenties, when he finally managed to slip away. Afraid that this information would leave a permanent stain on their heritage, Apollo and his men had vowed to do whatever they could to destroy it.
But their mission had been foiled.
The book-and thousands of other documents-would soon be examined by experts.
Which experts, though, was a matter of some contention.
Legally speaking, the treasure did not belong to anyone, since no one knew who had taken it to the mountain. The Brotherhood may have protected it for centuries, but that did not make it theirs. Furthermore, since the artifacts had supposedly been moved from Greece (and other parts of the world) to Constantinople and then to Mount Athos, there was no way of proving ownership of any of the items. Including the Statue of Zeus.
Was it stolen from Olympia? Or was it given to the Romans as a gift? No one knew for sure-and no one would know until everything inside the crates had been studied.
For the first few days after its discovery, Dial was able to keep news of the treasure from the outside world. He sealed off the cave and did not allow anyone inside, claiming it was an Interpol crime scene. Which, in fact, it was. Nicolas had killed himself inside the cave, and as a result of the information he had provided before his death-including his claim that a collector from Dial’s homeland had recently caused the monks trouble-Interpol searched the phone records of the seven monks who made up the Brotherhood, looking for anything suspicious.
One call stood out among all the others.
A few days before the abbot from Metéora had been murdered alongside his brethren, he had called an unlisted number in Russia. The conversation lasted seventeen minutes. After this phone call, a large sum of money had been wired from an account in Athens to one in Moscow. The name on the Russian account was Alexei Kozlov, the assassin who had killed Richard Byrd.
That meant the Brotherhood had paid to have Byrd eliminated.
What prompted them to take such an extreme step was still unclear. Had they learned about Byrd’s search for Schliemann’s map? Or had they been warned about his relationship with the Spartans? Unfortunately, Dial didn’t know for sure. He assumed that the Brotherhood’s secret meeting at Metéora had been called so they could discuss the situation.
Ironically, it was that gathering that had made them such an easy target.
They had met to protect their organization, but the meeting had led to their slaughter.
From the deck of Jarkko’s yacht, Payne stared at the light blue water of the Aegean Sea. Jones was somewhere nearby, swimming or fishing or talking to one of the local ladies Jarkko had brought aboard. No matter where they went in Limnos, everyone knew the fun-loving Finn.
Payne would be joining them shortly, but first he had to update Dial on the latest news about the treasure. “Nick,” he said into his cell phone, “how’s life?”
“Busy. I’ve spent the last two weeks trying to keep your ass out of jail.”
“If it’s possible, I’d like to keep all of me out of jail. Not just my ass.”
Dial laughed. He was speaking to Payne on a secure line in his office at Interpol Headquarters. “Don’t worry. I’m a pretty good liar. I convinced the Greek government that I summoned you and D.J. as my personal backup once I learned of the trouble on Mount Athos.”
“What about Allison?” Payne wondered.
“Her presence was a little tougher to explain. Thankfully, one of my colleagues, Henri, told me that the Holy Mountain sheltered many women refugees during the Greek War of Independence in the nineteenth century. I claimed that her life had been in danger-which technically it was-and we decided the safest place for her was with us.”