The Lost Throne by Chris Kuzneski Page B

Victims from three different countries meant this was an Interpol case. Somehow he had always sensed it would be—otherwise he wouldn’t have flown to Greece on such short notice—but now it was official. That meant he could turn up the intensity of his investigation. He could chase down leads. He could interview witnesses. He could do all the things that he wanted to do without needing permission from the Greek government. Suddenly, his day was looking a whole lot brighter.
    Unfortunately, his mood would change less than an hour later.

    A ndropoulos parked his car on the upper access road to Holy Trinity, right behind several other blue-and-white Citroëns. Dial counted the squad cars and shook his head. For some reason the entire police force was roaming around the cliffs, doing God knows what.
    “If I were a criminal,” Dial said, “I would head straight to Kalampáka and rob a bank. It would take thirty minutes for you guys to reach town.”
    Andropoulos glanced at the city nestled in the valley. “You are right. I am tempted to call my cousin and let him know.”
    “Is he an officer?”
    “No, sir. He’s a pickpocket. But he has the potential to be so much more.”
    Dial laughed as he followed Andropoulos down the steep hillside. They used the same path as the day before, though it didn’t seem nearly as treacherous to Dial. Perhaps he was getting used to the footing. Or maybe it had to do with the sunlight, which was a drastic improvement over a single flashlight. Whatever the reason, he was able to pay closer attention to the terrain than he had on the previous night.
    The first thing Dial noticed was the cable-car system that ran across the gorge to Holy Trinity. He slowed his pace when he saw its thin wires bouncing up and down as if they were caught in a violent storm. Then he spotted the reason why. A single monk, wearing a black cassock and cap, was sitting in a rickety cart as it was being pulled toward the top, more than a thousand feet in the air. Dial stopped to stare at the spectacle, and when he did, he heard the distant squeaking of pulleys and wheels coming from somewhere inside the ancient monastery.
    Dial said, “You’d have to pay me a lot of money to ride in that thing.”
    Andropoulos nodded in agreement. “I once asked a monk when they replaced the cable. And he said, ‘When the old one breaks.’”
    “Strangely, I had a friend in college who had the same policy about condoms.”
    “Sir, that’s disgusting.”
    Dial laughed at his juvenile joke as he continued down the hillside. He knew he couldn’t make comments like that inside the monastery—at least not within earshot of any monks—so he tried to get them out of his system now. It was more difficult than it sounded. Working in a profession that was filled with so much violence and death, Dial relied on humor to keep him sane. Sometimes it was a racy comment. Other times it was a practical joke. Most of the time, it wasn’t meant to be malicious—like teasing Andropoulos about his hair and clothes. He was just having some fun while trying to solve a case that would probably depress him. Otherwise, he figured, he’d have to drink himself to sleep like half the cops he’d met.
    In his mind, humor was a pretty good alternative to alcoholism.
    Fifteen minutes later, the two of them were inside Holy Trinity, reexamining the crime scene. To Dial, everything looked different during daylight hours. The color of the stone was lighter. The construction of the monastery looked older, somehow more fragile. And the distance to the valley below was much greater than he expected. He glanced over the wall and for the first time could actually see the ground. At least ten people were down there, searching for clues or cleaning the rocks or something. Dial couldn’t tell for sure. Not from this far away.
    “Hey, Marcus, do me a favor. Get me the names and backgrounds of all the monks they’ve identified. I’d like to have that ASAP