Sully grinned. “Smart kid.” He beamed, almost as proud of her as he seemed of himself.
“Wow, look at that,” Drake said. “I didn’t think Victor Sullivan had ever done homework in his life.”
Sully flopped onto the bed, set the journal on his chest, and put his hands behind his head-the picture of relaxation.
“I guess you can teach an old dog new tricks,” he said.
“So we’re not going to Therasia tomorrow, I take it?” Jada asked. “Ian seemed so sure that the reference to Therasia on that jar meant that’s where the labyrinth must be. And you’ve gotta admit, there was logic to that.”
Drake went to the French doors and looked out at the moonlit water of the caldera. “There still is. But it’s been awhile. What’s called Therasia now is not the same as what was called Therasia then. We can’t know until we look, but if you think about Knossos and Crocodilopolis, the labyrinths there were not in the city or next to the temple; they were a short distance away. That fits with the location of the fortress.”
“Which would mean the labyrinth was underground,” Sully said. “Built right into the hill. That would’ve taken a hell of a long time.”
Drake ruminated on that a minute, then glanced at Jada.
“Your father thought it was under Goulas.”
Jada came up beside him, and together they stared out at the water for a moment. Then she smiled and turned to Sully.
“That’s good enough for me.”
14
The sun had started its leisurely crawl across the sky shortly after Drake hauled himself out of bed. Now the clock on the dashboard of their taxi ticked toward nine a.m. as the Greek cabbie steered around the potholes on the road to Akrotiri village.
The first sight of the village made Drake wonder if they somehow had ended up in the wrong place, but the taxi driver explained that the tourists who made the trip out to see the ruins didn’t bother to stop in the village and that that was just how the villagers liked it. The place reminded Drake of little American towns that had dried up and blown away when highways were built that took most of the traffic off the byways of earlier days.
Other than the single blue dome at the center, the rest of the village that sprawled around the base of the hill looked like a scattering of child’s blocks, painted white and left to fade in the sun. Rising in the middle of that ordinariness was the hill Sully had read about, and atop it the Goulas-the tower-and the fortress around it.
As the taxi wound its way through the narrow streets of the village, people paused to watch them pass, eyes narrowed with curiosity, some of their expressions not at all welcoming. People worked here, going about their lives with no interest in the more commercial concerns of the rest of the island. Driving through Akrotiri village, Drake felt as if they were slipping back in time.
The driver took them up the hill as far as he could manage, past the single blue-domed building, and then in toward the crumbled wall of the fortress, but there he had to leave them off. Drake paid him double his asking price and promised twice as much if he would retrieve them at five o’clock. He took the cab company’s phone number along with the driver’s promise and then watched the man drive off, raising a cloud of dust with his departure. He spotted several other, smaller clouds in the distance-vehicles on the road, either to the village or, more likely, to the dig site.
“You think he’ll come back?” Jada asked, standing beside him and watching the shrinking dust devil that indicated the retreating cab.
“We can hope.”
They had eight hours before the taxi driver returned-if he returned. Drake figured that gave them plenty of time to explore the ruins. If the labyrinth was there and there was a way in, they would find it. And if they came up empty-handed, he could always call and try to get the taxi driver to return sooner, though he worried that they could end up with a lot of walking ahead of them.
Drake unzipped his pack and took inventory, making sure he hadn’t forgotten anything vitaclass="underline" water, fruit, and cheese from the hotel, rope, flashlight, gun. They all carried the same essential supplies, but Drake hoped they wouldn’t be down there long enough to require the use of anything but the flashlights.
“Nice place,” Sully muttered, looking up at the fortress. “We should convert it into a bed-and-breakfast.”
“I feel like I’m in some Greek version of Dracula,” Jada said, gazing up at the fortress. “We’ve got the remains of a castle and the little village of people who stare at you as you go by. All we’re missing is a Greek Dracula.”
“That’d be just our luck,” Sully sighed, and started walking.
“Good thing there’s no such thing as vampires,” Jada replied, setting off after him.
Drake said nothing. He slipped his backpack on and started walking.
“Wait, there aren’t, right?” he heard Jada ask.
“Not that we’ve ever run across,” Sully admitted. “And we’ve seen some wild stuff. Sometimes stories are just stories. Vampires are absurd, anyway. They’re always better dressed than everyone else, right? But they’re up all night killing people and drinking blood, and half the time they live in graves and crypts or whatever. Yeah, these are not creatures well versed in the laundry arts. Stupid. Who believes that crap?”
Drake smiled. Laundry. He could always trust Sully to find the practical angle.
Jada and Sully caught up with him. Sully patted his pockets in search of a cigar but apparently had left his last one behind in the hotel. He’d managed to remember his gun but not a cigar. Drake almost suggested it might be his subconscious trying to make a statement about smoking but decided not to antagonize his friend. Don’t poke the bear, Sully had often said when Drake was younger. As rules went, it was a smart one.
They began by making a complete circuit of the fortress, following the perimeter and examining the places where the walls had crumbled. The medieval stone structure had begun to collapse like a sand castle in some places, eroded by entropy, but in others the walls remained standing strong. They found only a handful of places where crevices had formed in the exterior of the ruin, and none of them yielded evidence of anything beneath the structure.
In the most dangerous places, haphazard attempts had been made to block off entry. There were signs and in one place a piece of railing that looked new enough to be a recent effort, but if so the village or the island had run out of money before it could be completed. A twelve-foot stretch of metal railing with nothing on either side of it would do little to keep inquisitive visitors away. It slowed Drake and his friends not at all.
At the rear of the fortress they encountered a partially collapsed doorway. Wooden supports had been put in place to prevent more of the stone above the door from falling, and makeshift wooden doors had been put in place to block the entrance. Once upon a time, the wood might have been strong and new, but the arid weather and sea air had dried and weakened it. A chain looped through the door handles, but it took Drake three kicks to smash the doors open, one of the handles tearing right out of the wood.
And they were in.
“Now let’s see what we can find before the police show up,” Jada suggested.
Sully pushed the doors closed, then dragged a couple of heavy blocks of broken masonry over to keep them from swinging inward.
“Do they even have cops here?” he asked.
“Maybe not in the village, but on the island?” Jada said. “Yeah.”
“This is as remote as you can find on Santorini,” Drake said. “I’m guessing there aren’t a ton of cell phones. And no matter what weird looks we got on the way up here, they must see the occasional tourist checking this place out. They’re more likely to think we’re idiots than thieves or vandals or something.”
“So we’re relying on them thinking we’re just American fools?” Sully asked.