Gabriel returned to the bike.
“I grew up just the other side of this field,” Christos said as they got underway again. “Papa, he would tell me, don’t ever drive in there, no matter what. But I didn’t listen. None of us boys did. We all dared each other, who could go the closest. We could find the edge with our eyes closed.”
“I guess those guys didn’t grow up here,” Gabriel said.
“I guess not,” Christos said.
They were back on the road, chugging up the side of the mountain once more.
“How do you think those guys got on our tail?” Gabriel asked.
Sitting in front of him, Christos shrugged. “Someone must have called them, told them there was a man asking questions about a sphinx.”
“They tell you to keep an eye out for that?”
“Mm-hm,” Christos said. “Said they’d pay, too. Fifty dollars U.S. for any tip, no questions asked.”
“That’s a pretty good deal,” Gabriel said.
“It is.”
“Yet, instead of taking them up on it yourself, you just led them over a cliff.”
“That’s not a cliff,” Christos said.
“They’re just as dead,” Gabriel said. “Why’d you do it? Why not turn me in for the money?”
Christos thought about it for a moment. “You gave my father three hundred dollars when you didn’t have to. I’m not going to turn you in for fifty.”
“What if they offer four hundred?”
Christos looked back over his shoulder and grinned. “We’ll see.”
The miles peeled away beneath their tires and the view the road commanded became more spectacular as their elevation rose.
“Where are we going?” Gabriel finally asked.
“Anavatos,” Christos said. “To see a man named Tigranes.”
“I thought Anavatos was deserted.”
“Almost,” Christos said. “Still a few people live there.”
“And this Tigranes, he knows something about the history of Chios’ sphinxes?”
“Oh, yes,” Christos said.
“Did you take the others to see him,” Gabriel asked, “the other Americans?”
“I tried,” Christos said. “And the Hungarian they worked for, too.” Gabriel’s hands tensed. “But he wouldn’t talk to them. Just plain refused.”
“I see. And why do you think he’ll talk to me? Because I pay better?”
“No—Tigranes doesn’t care about money. He wouldn’t live in Anavatos if he did.”
“Then why?”
“For one thing, you speak our language,” Christos said.
“That means something to him?” Gabriel said.
“That means everything to him,” Christos said.
Chapter 12
Anavatos crowned the mountain they’d been ascending, a cluttered, half-ruined collection of cheek-to-jowl stone buildings that made the buildings of Avgonyma look modern by comparison. The only way in was through a steep and winding road that twisted back on itself several times before arriving. The town’s name meant “unreachable” or “inaccessible,” and never had a place been more appropriately named, Gabriel thought, except maybe Dull, Texas. Built into the mountain, Anavatos was also sometimes called “the invisible city”—if you didn’t know it was there, you’d never see it from below, which is why Chians had used it as a hideout or refuge for centuries. This lasted until 1822, when a siege by the Turks had ended in a mass suicide, with the residents of Anavatos plunging to their deaths off the mountain rather than be taken alive. It had been deserted ever since, a ghost town in the most literal sense.
The streets, as they entered, were completely empty—not even an old woman, not even a cat. Christos drove through them with the confidence of one who knew where he was going and Gabriel let himself be led. He thought briefly about Christos’ earlier remark when asked if his allegiance could be bought for $400—We’ll see—but decided Christos wouldn’t have joked about it if he were really leading Gabriel into a trap. He was a local kid, maybe eighteen or nineteen years old, not someone polished in the art of deceit. And even if Gabriel were wrong about this…well, it was too late to do anything about it now.
Gabriel held on till Christos pulled up in front of a two-story building whose stones looked scrofulous with age and wear. There were openings in the walls, but it was an exaggeration to call them windows; there was no glass in them, certainly. And in lieu of a door there was only an uneven archway.
They dismounted and Christos shouted up, cupping both hands around his mouth. “Sir! It’s Christos Anninos. There’s someone I want you to meet.”
No response was shouted back—but after a moment the silence was broken by the sound of a pair of sandals slapping against stone steps.
The man who emerged from the doorway brought the word antique to mind, not only because he was elderly—though he was that, his face and hands seamed with countless wrinkles, his hair tumbling gray and untrimmed down to his shoulders, a shaggy white beard resting on his chest—but also because he wore a wool chiton, fastened at the shoulder with a metal clasp and flat sandals held on with straps of knotted leather. He looked like something out of a museum diorama.
In the crook of one arm, he was carrying a U-shaped wooden frame with four strings threaded from a crossbar down to the base of the U—a sort of miniature harp that was just the touch needed to complete the picture of an ancient Greek bard. They might have interrupted him while he was posing for an illustration for a dictionary, Gabriel thought; or perhaps he was like the men who dress up in plastic gladiator outfits and hang around the Coliseum in Rome, bumming cigarettes from tourists and hoping to score a dollar or two posing for photographs. This was Gabriel’s first impression, and he cursed himself for having hoped that this local youth might bring him to someone with genuine knowledge of the island’s past.
But looking again in each man’s eyes, Gabriel saw no sign of a put-on; both seemed in earnest, and Christos in particular had assumed an attitude of respect and deference entirely at odds with his earlier manner when racing up here on the bike. And taking another glance at the old man’s attire, Gabriel saw how far from a polished, plastic simulation of antiquity it was; also, how protectively the man cradled his clearly handmade instrument, how worn the bridge was and how calloused were his fingertips. He actually played the thing, apparently. He might well be a lunatic, living out here in an empty town on the top of a mountain—but he did not seem a charlatan.
Tigranes, meanwhile, took a similarly detailed survey of Gabriel, gazing critically at him from head to toe and, unlike Gabriel, looking progressively less satisfied with what he saw as his assessment went on. He frowned at the leather jacket and the frown deepened when he got to the holster poking out at the bottom.
“Another?” The old man’s voice was low and quiet, almost a whisper. “You bring another to me who cares nothing for my ancient duty, who cares only to satisfy his demands, who will mock and denigrate what he does not understand?”
“No—” Christos began, but Gabriel stepped forward, put a hand on the boy’s arm to silence him. Perhaps he was wasting his time—but if, on the other hand, the old man was what he seemed, Gabriel did not want to get turned away at the door as the Americans working for DeGroet had been.
“Honored father,” he said, in Greek, “I do not have the privilege of knowing you, but I promise, I mock nothing of the ancient world. I am a student of the ancient ways and hold them in the highest respect.”
Tigranes eyed him warily.
“Your instrument,” Gabriel said, gesturing toward the harp, “is it a phorminx or a kithara? It’s not a barbitos, I don’t think…is it?”