The Lost Throne

41

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 Metéora. He believed the killers might be from the mountain towns near Spárti, 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 Spárti 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 Spárti. 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 Spárti 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.

“After the wife was abducted, it was time for their wedding night. The man would drag his bride into a private section of the barracks, where he would take out his knife. Then, in a ritual that some locals still perform today, the man would shave her head like he was shearing a sheep. I mean, he’d get right down to her skin and just carve away until she was completely bald.”

“He cut off all her hair? What for?”

“Be patient,” Pappas ordered. “You’ll find out shortly.”

Manos kept fighting his laughter. He had heard this story, which was completely true, several times before. But there was something about the way that Pappas told it that kept it funny — especially when his audience was a wide-eyed rookie who wasn’t familiar with the Spartans.

“Anyway, here was the problem. Spartan men lived with nothing but males for the majority of their lives. They were told to love one another and protect one another because someday on the battlefield they would have to count on one another. Unfortunately, that ideology was so deeply embedded into their brains that they weren’t able to get physically aroused unless the person they were screwing actually looked like a man. Hence, the shaving of the wife’s head.”

“Are you serious?” Constantinou asked.

“Completely serious. When we get back to town, look it up if you don’t believe me.”

Manos nodded in agreement. “He’s serious. These guys are scary.”

“But it didn’t end there,” Pappas assured the rookie. “For the Spartans, the goal of sex wasn’t enjoyment; it was procreation. That meant no foreplay or romance of any kind. Late at night, a Spartan male would wait until all the other men were sleeping — because he didn’t want to disturb their rest — and sneak out of his barracks. His wife, realizing that her husband had little time to get aroused before he had to return, made sure her head was shaven at all times. In addition, to help set the mood she slept in men’s clothes, which we like to call Spartan lingerie. The combination of the darkness, the shaved head, and the men’s clothing made her husband feel like he was back with the boys, cuddling for warmth along the Eurotas River.”

“That’s disgusting,” Constantinou complained. “Why would you tell me that?”

Pappas glanced at him in the mirror. “How old are you, Thomas?”

“I’m twenty-two. Why?”

Manos shook his head with concern. “You’re twenty-two and you have a shaved head. Where we’re going, that’s a mighty attractive combination.”

Pappas nodded in agreement. “Like I said, make sure you stay close to us in the village. Otherwise, you might get dragged into the woods for your honeymoon.”

The first village they visited had no name. That was uncommon in Greece, where most people took pride in their community and bragged about it every chance they got. But these villagers were different. Like their Spartan ancestors, who refused to mint coins because it would only encourage interaction with outsiders, the citizens of this town wanted to be left alone.

Which, of course, was the reason that Pappas stopped here first. He was familiar with these people and their violent ways. In fact, from the moment he fielded the call from Interpol, Pappas had this place in mind. He figured, if there were killers lurking in the Taygetos Mountains, the odds were pretty good that they were going to be in the village that he called Little Sparta.

“I’ve been here before, so let me do all the talking,” said Pappas as he climbed out of the truck. “Stay close and keep your eyes open. These people do not like strangers.”

Manos and Constantinou nodded in silence.

The village was relatively small, no more than sixty homes spread against the rocky face of the mountain. But what it lacked in numbers, it more than made up in intensity.

The first time Pappas had visited the village, more than fifteen years earlier, he had stopped by the school and had caught a quick glimpse of their training methods. He had been amazed by the children’s level of discipline. The boys, even the youngest ones, didn’t fidget or goof around. They stood board-straight, like they were in the military, and did whatever they were told. Pappas figured that type of control was only achieved through severe physical punishment, but since he was there on a different matter and no complaints had been filed, he wasn’t allowed to investigate the school further.

Still, the sight of those preteen warriors disturbed him to the core.

He always wondered what type of men they would grow up to be.

Unfortunately, he and his partners were about to find out.