The Lost Throne

75

Payne studied the large pile of skulls stacked haphazardly against the wall. There were hundreds of them, several centuries’ worth of dead monks who had sworn to guard an ancient treasure. If his friends were correct, the monks still protected it — even in death.

“Explain this to me again,” he said to Jones. “You think the treasure is under there?”

“Not the treasure itself. But I think the skulls are hiding something. A fissure or a passageway.”

Payne smirked at his friend. “A minute ago you were making fun of me when I said there might be a clue somewhere in the cave. Now you’re telling me there’s a secret passageway?”

Jones nodded his head. “Yep. That’s what I’m saying.”

“That sounds kind of crazy.”

Andropoulos cleared his throat. “Actually, sir, it’s not that crazy. Director Dial and I found a secret tunnel at Metéora. It was hidden behind a large tapestry in the monks’ barracks.”

Payne glanced at him. “You found a tunnel? What was inside?”

“Stairs and an underground vault with several carved shelves and a fancy stone altar, but whatever had been stored in there had been moved long ago.”

“The room was empty?”

“Yes, sir. It was empty.”

Dial corrected him. “Actually, that’s inaccurate. We did find something important.”

Payne asked, “What was that?”

“The severed heads of the Brotherhood.”

“Are you serious? The heads were down there?”

Dial nodded as pieces of the puzzle slowly fell into place. “The Spartans slaughtered the monks, and then stacked their heads on the stone altar. At the time, we assumed that they were sending a message, but we didn’t know what it was. Now I have my answer.”

“Which is?” Payne wondered.

“One of the monks — one of the seven members of the Brotherhood — must’ve revealed the treasure’s location before his death. The stacked heads were the Spartans’ way of bragging about it.”

Jones added, “Which would explain their presence on the mountain. They knew where the treasure was hidden, and they were coming to get it.”

“It appears that way, yes.”

Payne glanced at Dial. “It appears that way? Do you have another theory?”

Andropoulos said, “He always has a theory.”

Dial smiled. The young cop was learning. “For some reason, something about the Spartans’ role in this still doesn’t seem to fit. From what I have been told, the Spartans weren’t motivated by money. Their sole purpose in life was to be the best warriors they could be. They didn’t care about gold or treasure. They only cared about their reputations as soldiers.”

Payne shrugged. “Times change. People change. Money might mean more to them now.”

“I don’t know about that,” Dial argued. “They still live in the same region of Greece and continue to speak Laconian after all these years. They still train like their ancestors, and obviously have the same armor and weapons. On the surface, it appears they still care about the same basic things. And as far as I know, money isn’t one of them.”

“Then why were they here?”

“When Marcus and I spotted the tunnel, we found these incredibly detailed carvings of soldiers and war. They appeared on the door, on the shelves, and on the stone altar. To us, they seemed completely out of place in a monastery where all the other artwork focused on religion. Now I’m beginning to wonder if the carvings had something to do with the treasure.”

“Such as?”

Dial explained his theory. “We were informed that the monasteries have always been used as sanctuaries, a place where artists and writers were free to work without persecution. We were also told that Spartans frowned upon the written word. Actually, that’s an understatement. Writing was forbidden inside their culture. Everything we know about them comes from outside sources, and since we’re talking about twenty-five hundred years ago, sources are limited.”

He paused to catch his breath. “So, and this is just a wild guess here, what if there’s more to this treasure than gold? What if there are ancient books or artwork that would cast the Spartans in a negative light? What if their reason for coming here wasn’t to get rich? What if they came here to protect their heritage?”

Jones laughed and patted Dial on the back. “A wild guess? That doesn’t sound like a wild guess to me. It sounds like a highly detailed hypothesis. I was half-expecting you to pull out graphs and charts.”

Dial shrugged. “What can I say? I had a lot of time to think when we were climbing the mountain.”

“Well,” Jones said as he rubbed his hands together, “there’s only one way to see if your theory is correct. Let’s find us a treasure.”

While Andropoulos guarded the entrance to the cave, the other four worked as a team. Payne and Jones handed the skulls to Dial and Allison, who moved them carefully to the other side of the cave. Slowly but surely the first pile dwindled as the new pile started to rise.

Despite the seemingly gruesome nature of their task, none of them were fazed by the undertaking. In fact, the large number of skulls actually depersonalized the situation for them. In their minds, they weren’t picking up skulls. They were simply clearing loose impediments from a hidden tunnel.

At least they hoped they were.

They wouldn’t know for sure for another few minutes.

In the end, it was Jones who spotted the first harbinger. As he pulled a skull away from the wall, he noticed a small fissure. “Allison, hand me a light.”

Their flashlights sat on the floor, each of them shining on the ceiling above so they could work with both hands. She picked up the closest one and handed it to him.

“Do you see something?”

“I don’t know yet.”

He shined the light into the crack, which started a few feet above the ground. Because of his angle and the remaining skulls that blocked his view, he couldn’t see much. But the gap definitely extended into the wall. “There’s a hole back here.”

Standing next to the pile, Payne wiped his forehead with his sleeve. “How big is it?”

“I can’t tell yet.”

“Then put down the light and get back to work.”

Jones gave him a mock salute. “Yes, sir.”

They laughed in the gloom of the cave as they continued digging.

With each passing minute, with each skull that was carried away, their level of excitement grew. And so did the small hole. First it was a fissure. Then it became a crawl space. Before long they realized it was something more significant. It was the beginning of a stone ramp that went deep inside the core of the mountain.

The monks’ construction was ingenious. Instead of cutting an arch or doorway in the side of the cave, which would have been difficult to conceal in a natural setting, they had cut through the base of the wall and dug a trench through the cave’s floor. They’d used dirt and small rocks to pack the empty space below and then covered everything with skulls.

In the culture of Mount Athos, it was a wonderful deterrent.

Any hermit who stumbled upon the cave would have been reluctant to take residence in the final resting place of so many monks. And they certainly wouldn’t have moved the skulls or stolen them as souvenirs. That would have been the ultimate sign of disrespect. So the skulls did much more than conceal the tunnel: they actually kept interlopers away.

Until now.