“There have been discussions. Nothing has been agreed, but they will do as I suggest. I contribute generously to several of their causes, and unlike you, I am not ashamed to apply leverage. Anyway, they prefer to deal with countrymen, you know the Greeks.”
“And you’re doing this for what reason?”
“You don’t believe it’s for the church?” Fotis smiled at him.
“Suspicious boy. Very well, say that it is for myself. There is little in life that would please me more than returning the icon to Greece, and having a few precious days alone with it before that.”
“I see.”
“And you know, there is another person who might benefit.” Fotis eyed him keenly, but Matthew was unwilling to play. “Your father will be released from the hospital shortly.”
“My father?” A cold panic turned the pudding to lead in his stomach.
“Yes.”
“He’s not much for art. Or religion.”
“If you would remember what you have read, you would understand that faith is not always necessary for healing. It is in the general nature of the miraculous. Doubters are critical to any religion. Their resistance defines faith, and it usually says something about their hearts. The truly godless never bother to think about the matter. Your father’s scorn says something different to me from what he intends.”
“I’m sure he’d be very interested to hear that,” Matthew snapped, anger rising at Fotis’ daring to bring his father into this, even as the old man’s words stirred other, more elusive feelings.
“I would not be foolish enough to say it to him, and I trust that you will have the wisdom not to mention any of this. He will come to my home for a visit when he is out of the hospital. The icon will be there. The rest will be in God’s hands.”
“In God’s hands?” Matthew could barely contain himself. Private musings had leaped from his mind, from the old dusty pages in the library to his godfather’s lips. His own scorn died on his tongue, killed by some stronger emotion. Fear? Was it fear lurking beneath the cover of his righteous rage, and what should he be frightened off? “You honestly think that icon will miraculously cure him?”
“I expect nothing. I would not deny him the opportunity to derive some good from it. Why would you?”
“And for that ridiculous reason I’m not supposed to tell Ana Kessler the truth?”
“There is nothing useful you are keeping from her. And there are many reasons why you should allow the matter to take its course. Must we review them again? Do you need more?”
Matthew’s anger reached some critical mass and converted itself into paralyzing self-disgust. A man who knew his mind would do what he had to, would not sit here debating.
“Do you think the girl is telling you everything?” Fotis continued.
“What do you mean?”
“Only that she may have secrets of her own.”
“Like what?”
“I do not claim to know, but it is a strange and secretive family, from what little I understand. She has not hesitated to turn you to her own purposes, make you her personal adviser.”
“I’ve done that willingly.”
“It always feels that way with a woman, yes?”
“I don’t like your insinuations.”
“I withdraw them. You need no self-serving reasons to do what is right.”
“How do either of us know what that is?”
“You will do what is right because you are a good man. You do not require the spur of familial guilt and obligation.”
“Familial guilt,” spat Matthew. “You mean your guilt.”
“Are we not family? But that is not what I meant. The responsibility lies closer still.”
“Please don’t be mysterious, Theio. Say what you’re going to say.”
Fotis’ eyes were suddenly damp, and his face seemed to droop with his mustache.
“I did not want to speak of this. I break a trust by doing so. Do you understand me? To Fithee. The Snake.”
“The one who killed the priest.”
Fotis reached one long, shaking hand across the table and caught Matthew’s sleeve.
“We cannot know that he did kill him. He was doing what he felt was right, remember that.”
“Tell me.”
“Your Papou.” And he withdrew the hand, looked away. Matthew simply stared.
“Papou was the Snake.”
Fotis only nodded, back bent, hat falling over his eyes. Diminished. Matthew allowed any expressions of shock or denial to pass through his mind unspoken. Indeed, the longer he sat there, made mute by the terrible questions in his mouth, the more they tasted like truth. Had he thought about it before now, he might have guessed. Perhaps he had, perhaps that explained his present restraint. Killers grew into kindly old men. He knew his grandfather had an ugly past. His father had told him more than once that the man had done things of which he was now ashamed, things which haunted him. Certainly, there were circumstances that might explain what happened, yet Matthew had the feeling he would never learn what they were. He could fish for answers, but he would have to be careful, have to keep his own secrets from Andreas until he knew more. Even now, all these years later, it was clear that his grandfather was up to something here, something more than visiting his son in the hospital. He was hardly ever at the hotel when Matthew called, would not discuss whom he was seeing or why. Could it be about the icon?
“And if I ask him about this, he’ll confirm it?”
Fotis looked shocked.
“My goodness, child, what could he say to such a thing? He might speak true, he might invent a lie, I don’t know. More than likely, he will say nothing, but I think it would break his heart if he found out that you knew. I pray you will not mention it.”
In the silence that followed, the waiter laid a check on the table. When Fotis did not immediately reach for it, Matthew knew the old man was shaken. He took the check himself, idly folding it several times.
“Damn it, Theio. I wish I didn’t know this.”
Andreas, in the backseat with Matthew, fought the drowsiness that always hit him in an overheated car. The smooth driving of his granddaughter Mary, the scientist in training, did not aid his efforts. He had never known a woman to drive so well. In the passenger seat, Alekos was still and pale, but his eyes blazed with new life as he looked out on the wet spring woods. He had not expected to see this place again, thought Andreas; he is wondering if this is the last time he will see it.
I have missed his whole life, the old man pondered. When Alex was a boy, Andreas had been constantly away on one awful piece of business or another. Serving his country. Errands for some bloody-minded brute, or worse, some arrogant idealist, soon corrupted. Forced retirements when governments changed, the chance to lead a normal life thrown away when he was called back to serve the next fool as he’d served the last. It might take months, but eventually they all understood how much they needed men like him. Irreplaceable men, who knew all the secrets. Why did he go back, once, twice, how many times? Because it was all he knew? He could have learned something else. He could have been a man of business. Why did he allow himself to stay in that terrible game, where nobody won, where keeping the idiots in power was the only goal? On good days, he understood the need; there were real enemies. But then there were all those men broken in body and spirit for harmless beliefs. Men not so different from himself.
Before long Alekos was off to school in America, where he fell in love, and never returned home. Which was just as well, given what Greece became in those years. But the familial bonds were strained, and Maria’s death seemed to snap them. Andreas suspected some loose words from Fotis, either to Alekos or to his hard-hearted niece Irini, Alekos’ wife. There was no other way that his son could have learned certain things, things he would have been better off not knowing. God only knew what Fotis’ goal had been. To drive a wedge between father and son? If he had planned to step in and play surrogate father, that plan had failed. He alienated himself from the boy as well. The evil stories had bred others in Alekos’ mind, until he had come to see plots everywhere. Yet that explanation felt like letting Andreas out of his share in the blame. His absence, his actions, had somehow poisoned his child’s mind, made him turn a cold, scientific eye on life, which he found wanting in every regard.